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Ambition 

E ARE living at a time when 
to be young is the proudest 
thing in the world. The 
world will be a fine place to 
live in when you grow up. What are 
you going to do in it? Are you going 
to muddle through somehow until the 
dark gates open that lead into another 
life, or are you going to make yourself 
known and felt and become a power for 
good? 

“ Nothing can keep you back if you 
mean to go forward. The roads that 
lead to success are widening more and 
more. You may wander in a hundred 
fields and pick your prize. 

“There are low ambitions and high 
ambitions. Let us see that we aim at a 
high purpose. In Emerson’s splendid 
words, let us ‘hitch our wagon to a 
star’.” (See page 107) 

















AMBITION 







COMPTONS PICTURED 
ENCYCLOPEDIA 


VOLUME 1 


Qo inspire ambition , to stimulate 
tfe imagination, to provide tfie- 
mourning mind witfi accurate 
information told in an interest¬ 
ing stifle, and tfius lead into 
broader fields of knowledge - 
sucRis tfie purpose oftRis work 



PublisHed B37 

EE.Compton ecC ompany 

CHICAGO 






h 

' 


e 



Imperial and International Copyright 
secured. All rights reserved for all 
countries. Translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scan¬ 
dinavian, specifically reserved. 

PRINTED IN U. S. A. 

CHICAGO 

ILLINOIS 


















THE DIRECTING EDITORS 















































EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 

COMPTON’S PICTURED 
ENCYCLOPEDI A 

Editor-in-Chief 

GUY STANTON FORD, A.M., Ph.D. 

Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of European History, University of Minnesota; Director, Division of 
Educational Publications (Committee on Public Information, Washington, D.C.). 

Managing Editor 

SAMUEL BANNISTER HARDING, A.M., Ph.D. 

Professor of European History, Indiana University, 1895-1918; Acting Professor of History, University of Minnesota; 
joint Editor, ‘The War Cyclopedia’ (Committee on Public Information, Washington, D.C.); author ‘New 
Medieval and Modern History’, ‘The Story of the Middle Ages’, ‘Old World Background to 
American History’, ‘The Federal Constitution in Massachusetts’, ‘Harding 
European History Maps ’, etc., etc. 

Managing Editor 

ATHOL EWART ROLLINS, A.B. 

Formerly Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University; Literary Editor, Milwaukee Journal; Instructor in Greek and Latin, 

Chicago School for Boys. 

Art Editor 

SEYMOUR JONES 

Graduate, Art Institute, Chicago; Art Editor, ‘Pictured Knowledge’, ‘New Student’s Reference Work’. 

Associate Editor 

ARTHUR MEE 

Editor-in-Chief, ‘Book of Knowledge’; Editor, My Magazine, The Children's Newspaper, ‘Harmsworth’s Self-Edu¬ 
cator’, ‘Harmsworth’s History of the World’, ‘The World’s Great Books’, ‘Harmsworth’s Popular Science’, 
‘Harmsworth’s Natural History’; formerly Literary Editor, London Daily Mail; author ‘Letters 

to Boys’, ‘Letters to Girls’, etc. 

Staff Editor for Visual Education 

FRANCIS BLAKE ATKINSON 

Managing Editor, ‘Pictured Knowledge’; formerly Editor, The Little Chronicle; author, ‘The Strange Adventures 
of a Pebble’ (Hallam Hawksworth), ‘The Adventures of a Grain of Dust’, etc. 

Staff Editor for Picture-Text and Study Outlines 

RONALD MILLAR, A.B. 

Formerly Assistant, Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College; Editorial Staff, Chicago Evening Post, etc. 


DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS 


Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Laird Borden, 
G.C.M.G., P.C., K.C. 

For Canada 

Albert Pruden Carman, A.M., D.Sc. 

For Physics and Engineering 

Lotus Delta Coffman, A.M., Ph.D. 

For Education and School Subjects 

Wilbur Adelman Cogshall, A.M. 

For Astronomy 

Anna Botsford Comstock 

For Nature Study 

John Merle Coulter, A.M., Ph.D. 

For Botany 


Formerly Prime Minister of Canada. 


Professor of Physics, University of Illinois. 

President, University of Minnesota; author, ‘The Social Com¬ 
position of the Teaching Population’, etc.; Editor, Journal 
of Educational Administration and Supervision, etc. 

Associate Professor of Astronomy, Indiana University. 

Assistant Professor of Nature Study, Cornell University; author 
‘Ways of the Six-Footed’, ‘How to Know the Butterflies’, 
‘How to Keep Bees’, etc.; Editor, Nature Study Review. 

Head of Department of Botany, University of Chicago; founder 
and Editor, Botanical Gazette; author, ‘Plant Relations’, 
‘Plant Studies’, ‘A Textbook of Botany’, etc. 

ii 



DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS 


LAUDER WILLIAM JONES 
Professor of Chemistry, 
Princeton University 


LOTUS DELTA COFFMAN 
President, 

University of Minnesota 


REV. PETER GUILDAT 
Assoc. Prof., Church History, 
Catholic University of America 


JOHN MERLE COULTER 
Head, Department of Botany, 
University of Chicago 


SIR ROBERT LAIRD BORDEN 
Former Prime Minister, 
Canada 


WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 

Professor, English Lang, and Lit. 
Yale University 


ALBERT PRUDEN CARMAN 
Professor of Physics, 
University of Illinois 


ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK 
Asst. Professor of Nature Study, 
Cornell University 


ROLLIN D. SALISBURY 
Dean, Department of Geology, 
University of Chicago 


111 






















































Department Editors 


Henry J. Cox, Sc.D. 

For Meteorology 

Arthur G. Doughty, C.M.G., M.A., Lit.D. 

For Canada 

Rev. Peter Guilday, Ph.D. 

For Catholic Subjects 

Samuel Bannister Harding, A.M., Ph.D. 

For History and Geography 

Lucius Hudson Holt, Ph.D. 

Colonel, U. S. A. 

For Military Subjects 

Albert Woodward Jamison, A.M. 

For Agriculture 

Lauder William Jones, Ph.D. 

For Chemistry 

Elias Potter Lyon, Ph.D., M.D. 

For Physiology 

William Lyon Phelps, A.M., Ph.D. 

For American Literature 

Athol Ewart Rollins, A.B. 

For General Literature and Music 

Rollin D. Salisbury, A.M., LL.D. 

For Geology 

Charles Peter Sigerfoos, Ph.D. 

For Zoology 

William Oliver Stevens, Ph.D. 

For Naval Subjects 

George Zook, A.M., Ph.D. 

For the World War 


Meteorologist, in charge of North Central Forecast District, 
Chicago. 

Deputy Minister of Public Archives, Canada; author, ‘Life and 
Works of Tennyson’, ‘Quebec under Two Flags’, etc.; Editor, 
‘Canada and Its Provinces’, etc.; contributor to American 
Historical Review, ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’, etc. 

Associate Professor of Church History, Catholic University of 
America; founder, The Catholic Historical Review and Amer¬ 
ican Catholic Historical Association; Assistant Regional 
Director, S. A. T. C. (1918-19). 

Managing Editor. 

Professor of English and History, United States Military Acad¬ 
emy (West Point); author, ‘Introduction to the Study of 
Government’, ‘History of Europe’, etc. 

Assistant Professor, College of Agriculture, University of Illinois. 

Professor of Chemistry, Princeton University; author, ‘A 
Laboratory Outline of Organic Chemistry’. 

Dean of School of Medicine, LTniversity of Minnesota; formerly 
President, Association of American Medical Colleges. 

Professor of English Language and Literature, Yale University; 
author, ‘Essays on Modern Novelists’, ‘Essays on Books’, 
‘The Advance of the English Novel’, etc., etc. 

Managing Editor. 

Dean of Department of Geology, University of Chicago; author, 
‘Elementary Physiography’, etc. 

Professor of Zoology, University of Minnesota; formerly Assistant 
Professor of Animal Biology, Johns Hopkins University. 

Professor of English, United States Naval Academy; author, 
‘Guide Book to Annapolis’, ‘The Young Privateersman’, 
‘The Story of Our Navy’, ‘Boy’s Book of Famous Warships’. 

Formerly Professor of Modern European History, Pennsylvania 
State College; Specialist in Higher Education, United States 
Bureau of Education. 


CONTRIBUTING EDITORS, STAFF EDITORS, 
AND SPECIAL WRITERS 


Arthur A. Allen, Ph.D. 

On Birds 

Eleanor Atkinson 

On Biography; Stories from Literature and 
Mythology 


Assistant Professor of Zoology, Cornell LTniversity. 

Associate Editor, ‘Pictured Knowledge’; author, ‘The How and 
Why Library’, ‘The Boyhood of Lincoln’, ‘Greyfriars 
Bobby’,‘Johnny Appleseed’,‘Hearts Undaunted’, ‘Poilu’, etc. 


Marjorie Barrows 

On Biography; Geography 

Carl Lotus Becker, B. Litt. 

On American History 

Alma Louise Binzel, B.S., M.A. 

On Child Training 

Leila Love Brown, A.B. 

On Far Eastern Countries 

Rev. Patrick William Browne, S.T.D. 

On Papacy; Monasticism 

Fannie R. Buchanan, B.M. 

On Music; Biographies of Musicians 

Mary Carlock 

On English Literature 


Assistant Editor, Child Life; special writer for The Continent, etc. 

Professor of History, Cornell LTniversity; author, ‘Beginnings 
of the American People’, etc. 

Assistant Professor of Child Training, University of Minnesota; 
special writer,- Woman’s World; formerly Director of Kinder¬ 
garten Training, Winona Normal School. 

Magazine Writer. 

Managing Editor, Catholic Historical Review; author, ‘Story of 
Labrador’, ‘History of Newfoundland’; Editor and trans¬ 
lator, Dilhet’s ‘Etat de l’Eglise Catholique’. 

University Extension lecturer on Music; writer of children’s 
plays; contributor to Drama, etc. 

Associate Editor, The Eagle Magazine; formerly Associate 
Editor, The Dial. 


IV 



O <~) DO 


ft 



DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS 


WILBUR ADELMAN COGSHALL 
Assoc. Professor of Astronomy, 
Indiana University 


COL. LUCIUS HUDSON HOLT 
Professor, English and History, 
U. S. Military Academy 


ALBERT WOODWARD JAMISON 
Asst. Professor, College of Agri., 
University of Illinois 


GEORGE ZOOK 
Specialist in Higher Education, 
U. S. Bureau of Education 


ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY 
Deputy Minister, Public 
Archives, Canada 


CHARLES PETER SIGERFOOS 
Professor of Zoology, 
University of Minnesota 


HENRY J. COX 
Meteorologist, N. Cent. 
Forecast District, Chicago 


WILLIAM OLIVER STEVENS 
Professor of English, 
United States Naval Academy 


ELIAS POTTER LYON 
Dean, School of Medicine, 
University of Minnesota 


V 





















































Contributing Editors, 

Mary Katherine Chapin, A.M. 

On Chemistry; Physics 

Werrett Wallace Charters, Ph.D. 

On Grammar 

Harry C. Clem, A.M. 

For Maps 

Evelyn Colby, S.B. 

Assistant Editor, Fact-Index 

Lewis W. Colwell, C.E., B.S. 

On Arithmetic 

Henry Crew, Ph.D. 

On Physics 

Mabel Dean, A.B. 

On Literature; Biographies of Authors 

William Edward Dodd, Ph.D. 

On Woodrow Wilson 

Elliot R. Downing, Ph.D. 

On Science 

Nathalie Eaton, M.A. 

On Chemistry 

George Eggers 

For Fine Arts 

Clayton Holt Ernst, A.B. 

On Athletics; Sports and Games 

Frank Nugent Freeman, A.M., Ph.D. 

On Handwriting 

Melvin E. Haggerty, A.M., Ph.D. 

On Psychology 

J. A. Hammerton 

On England; London 

Samuel Northrop Harper, A.B. 

On Russian Literature 

Leon Augustus Hausman, Ph.D. 

On Biology 

Harry Hewes 

On Painting 

Howard Copeland Hill, A.M. 

On History; Political and Social Sciences 

Margaret Hobert 

On Plant Life; Geography 

Ernest Ingersoll 

On Animal Life 

Helen Ingersoll 

On Plant Life 

Frances Jenkins 

On Reading 

Jessie Kile, M.A. 

On History; Economics 

Margery Kirchner, B.S. 

On Scandinavian Countries 

Jessie Knotts 

On Home Economics; Applied Science 

Agnes C. Laut 

On United States 


Staff Editors, and Special Writers 

Formerly Managing Editor, The Modern Hospital. 

Dean, School of Education, Carnegie Institute of Technology; 
author, ‘Methods of Teaching’, ‘Teaching the Common 
Branches’, etc. 

Instructor in Geography, Chicago Public Schools. 

Instructor, Chicago Public Schools. 

Principal, Grover Cleveland School, Chicago; author, ‘Illustrated 
Arithmetic on a Constructive Basis’; Associate Editor, 
‘National Series of Arithmetics’. 

Professor of Physics, Northwestern University; author, ‘Princi¬ 
ples of Mechanics’, ‘General Physics’, etc. 

Staff Editor. 

Professor of American History, University of Chicago; author, 
‘Life of Jefferson Davis’, ‘Woodrow Wilson and His Work’. 

Associate Professor of Natural Science, College of Education, 
University of Chicago. 

Industrial Chemist formerly instructor, department of Chemistry, 
Lawrence College. 

Formerly Director, Chicago Art Institute; Director, Denver Art 
Association. 

Editor, The Open Road; formerly Assistant Editor, The Youth's 
Companion. 

Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Chicago. 

Dean, College of Education and Professor of Educational 
Psychology, University of Minnesota. 

Editor-in-Chief, ‘Harmsworth’s Universal Encyclopedia’, ‘Harms- 
worth’s Atlas’, ‘Harmsworth’s History of the World’, 
‘The Great War’, etc., etc. 

Associate Professor of Russian Language and Institutions, 
University of Chicago; formerly lecturer on Russian 
Institutional History in University of Liverpool, England, 
and an Editor of Russian Review. 

Instructor in Protozoology and General Biology, Cornell Univer¬ 
sity; Contributing Editor, Scientific American. 

Art Critic, The Detroit Journal and Toledo Blade, lecturer on 
painting and gravure, Toledo Museum of Arts. 

Head of Department of Social Science, The University of Chicago 
High School; author, ‘Community Life and Civic Problems” 

Staff Editor. 

Author, ‘Book of the Ocean’, ‘The Life of Animals’, ‘Wild Life of 
Orchard and Field’, etc.; formerly lecturer in Zoology, 
University of Chicago. 

Contributor to ‘Standard Dictionary’, ‘The New International 
Encyclopedia’, ‘The Americana’. 

Assistant Professor of Education, University of Cincinnati. 

Staff Editor; member, American Historical Association. 


Contributor on Home Economics to newspapers and magazines. 


Author, ‘Pathfinders of the West’, ‘Pioneers of the Pacific 
Coast’, etc; correspondent, Saturday Evening Post, Review 
of Reviews, Collier's, etc. 




vi 





CONTRIBUTING 


FRANK MORTON MCMURRY 
Prof., Elementary Education, 
Teachers’ College, Columbia 
University 


ARTHUR A. ALLEN 
Assistant Professor of Zoology, 
Cornell University 


REV. PATRICK WILLIAM 
BROWNE 
Managing Editor, 
Catholio Historical Review 


GEORGE EGGER3 
Director, Denver Art 
Association 


WILLIAM EDWARD DODD 
Professor, American History, 
University of Chicago 


LEWIS W. COLWELL 
Principal, Grover Cleveland 
School, Chicago 


FLETCHER HARPER SWIFT 
Professor, Dept, of Education, 
University of Minnesota 


AGNES C. LAUT 
Author, ‘Pathfinders of 
the West’, etc. 


ERNEST INGERSOLL 
Author, ‘The Life 
of Animals’, etc. 


vii 





























































Contributing Editors, Staff Editors, and Special Writers 


Ivy Lidman, Ph.B. 

On Geography; Political and Social Sciences 

Isabel McKinny, A.M. 

On Grammar 

Cyrus Macmillan 

On Canadian Literature 

Frank Morton McMurry, Ph.D. 

On How to Study; Teaching of Grammar 

E. S. Martin 

On Hoy Scouts; Camping 

Ronald Millar, A.B. 

On Architecture 

Ellen Torelle Nagler, M.A. 

On Zoology 

Wallace Notestein, M.S., Ph.D. 

On Modern English Biography 

Arthur F. Payne, M.A. 

On Vocational Education 

Harriet Peet, Ph.B. 

On Arithmetic 

William D. Reeve, B.S. 

On Algebra; Geometry 

Dorothy Robinson 

On Home Economics • 

Pauline Rosenberg, A.M. 

On English and American Literature 
Classical Mythology; Fine Arts 

Jean Saunders, A.M. 

On History; Fact-Index 

Mabel Scacheri, A.B. 

On French and Italian Literature 

Edna Schwarzman, Ph.B. 

On Literature 

Guido Stempel, A.M. 

On German Literature 

Renee B. Stern, Ph.B. 

On Temperance; Women’s Rights 

Ruth Davis Stevens, A.B. 

On Japan 

Martin D. Stevers, Ph.B. 

On Chemistry; Physics 

Fletcher Harper Swift, A.M., Ph.D 

On Education and Schools 

Eunice Tietjens 

On Poetry; Biographies of Authors 

Marvin J. Van Wagenen, Ph.D. 

On Intelligence Tests 

Curtis Walker, Ph.D. 

On English History and Biography 

Stella Ford Walker, A.B. 

On Agriculture; Applied Science; Economics 

William Stewart Wallace, M.A. 

On Canadian History and Government 

Susan Wilbur, M.A. 

On Geography; Greek and Roman History 

William Zimmerman, Jr., A.B. 

Assistant Editor, Fact-Index 


Staff Editor. 

% 

Instructor in English, Eastern Illinois State Normal School. 

Professor, Department of English, McGill University, Montreal; 
author ‘Fairy Tales from Canada’, etc. 

Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers’ College, Columbia 
University; author, ‘How to Study and Teaching How to 
Study’, ‘Elementary School Standards’, etc. 

Secretary, Editorial Board, Boy Scouts of America. 

Staff Editor. 

Formerly Fellow in Biology, Bryn Mawr College; Scholar of 
American Woman’s Naples Table Association at the 
Zoological Station at Naples. 

Professor of History, Cornell University. 

Assistant Professor of Trade and Industrial Education, Univer¬ 
sity of Minnesota. 

Instructor, State Normal School, Salem, Mass.; co-author, 
‘First Year in Numbers’, ‘Everyday Arithmetic’, etc. 

Instructor in Teachers’ Course in Mathematics, University of 
Minnesota High School. 

Contributor to Ladies' Home Journal, Mothers' Magazine, etc. 

Formerly Head of English Department, York College. 


Research worker for Division of International Law, Carnegie 
Foundation for International Peace; formerly of editorial 
staff, Minnesota Historical Society. 

Staff Editor. 

Instructor in English, Chicago Public Schools. 

Head of Department of Comparative Philology, Indiana Univer¬ 
sity. 

Editor. Woman’s Weekly; author, ‘Neighborhood Entertain¬ 
ments’, etc.; contributor to The Survey, etc. 

Formerly Editor, Japan Evangelist; teacher, Imperial Railway 
College, Tokyo; co-author, ‘American Patriotic Prose and 
Verse’. 

Formerly Associate Editor, Illustrated World. 

Professor, Department of Education, University of Minnesota; 
author, ‘Joseph—A Drama for Children’, ‘Education in 
Ancient Israel (to 70 A.D.)’, etc. 

Author, ‘Profiles from China’, ‘Body and Raiment’, ‘Jake’, etc. 

Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, University of 
Minnesota. 

Professor of History, Rice Institute of Technology. 

Formerly Associate Editor, Rate Research; contributor to 
Journal of Commerce; co-author ‘Central Station Rates in 
Theory and Practice’. 

Professor, University of Toronto. 

Formerly Assistant Editor, Poetry; Literary Editor, The Con¬ 
tinent. 

Managing Editor, ‘Illinois in the World War’; contributor on 
history and economics to ‘The World Book’. 


Vlll 



CONTRIBUTING 


MELVIN E. HAGGERTY 
Dean, College of Education, 
University of Minnesota 


ELLEN TORELLE NAGLER 
Formerly Fellow in Biology, 
Bryn Mawr College 


WILLIAM STEWART WALLACE 
Professor, University of Toronto 


J. A. HAMMERTON 
Editor-in-Chief, ‘Harmsworth’s 
Universal Encyclopedia’, etc. 


EUNICE TIETJENS 
Author, ‘Profiles from 
China’, etc. 


ALMA LOUISE BINZEL 
Asst. Professor, Child Training, 
University of Minnesota 


HARRIET PEET 
Instructor, S tate N orm a 1S ch ool, 
Salem, Mass. 


CLAYTON HOLT ERNST 
Editor, The Open Road 


LEON AUGUSTUS HAUSMAN 
Instructor, General Biology, 
Cornell University 




























































V £ 



Staff Editor in charge of the preparation of the 
text explaining the illustrations; Editor of the Study 
Outlines, “How Things Work” series, and other 
educational features. 


Staff Editor in charge of the Visual Education 
department, captions, article headings, and other 
display features; Editor of “Little Journeys” and 
graded bibliographies. 


ASSOCIATE ART EDITORS 




n O C *- z £* lC 5( X «(£8 r ; Ti & 


31 

Peter S. Gurwit 
^---:-- 

.IJ] 


o o 

Mr. Gurwit was associate Art Editor in 
special charge of the selection and prepara¬ 
tion of illustrations in the fields of Geog¬ 
raphy, Industries, and allied subjects; 
formerly feature artist and writer, Chicago 
Tribune and other publications; Art 
Editor, National Newspaper Service; 
Managing Editor, Newport Naval Maga¬ 
zine (U. S. N.), 1918-19. 

Mr. Wood Smith was Associate Art 
Editor in special charge of the selection 
and preparation of illustrations in the 
fields of History, Natural and Applied 
Sciences, and associated branches; former¬ 
ly Picture Editor for Harmsworth educa¬ 
tional publications (London)—Book of 
Knowledge, Harmsworth’s Natural His¬ 
tory, Harmsworth’s History of the World, 
and many others, 1906-16. 


n -PC yr-W— i ~iqq 


CL 

R. C. Wood Smith 

U - ZrsTr&JJLSJZrZZ ---^ 



Staff and Contributingtfrtists 


R. A. BARNES 
REX I. BRASHER 
G. BRON 

LOUISE CLASPER 
R. EPPERLY 
BRUNO ERTZ 
HARRY EVANS 
HAZEL FRAZEE 
JOHN GANTZER 


CHARLES GATHEMAN 
HILDA HANWAY 
BETTY HARRIS 
NEIL W. JANNES 
J. W. MARSH 
E. F. MATANIA 
WAL POGET 
FRED ROE 
HERBERT RUDEEN 

MAY HAG ADORN, Chief Proofreader 


SUE SEELEY 
CHARLES SHELDON 
ULDINE SHRIVER 
E. F. SKINNER 
MARSHALL SMITH 
JOHN R. SOURBY 
LANCELOT SPEED 
W. S. VANCE 
MILO WINTER 




trio 


X 









































































/ERY day of our lives there come to us the wishing moments— 
the times when, in the face of what is or what we are, we wish to 
be otherwise or in other places. If at such a time there should 
come to us an angel of light with an offer to fulfil one wish, 
how many of us would ask that we might live our lives over 
again? How many, when asked for a reason, would answer*in 
terms that meant, however expressed, a desire to recover lost 
opportunities for a better education, a richer and more varied 
life, knowledge that would close the door to error and open it 
to opportunity? How many, in brief, would answer in terms 
that meant access to books and the command they give us over 
the world of today and tomorrow? 

The wonder is not that such wishes come, but that we 
do not know that their fulfillment is offered us in good books, and if not for ourselves, at least for 
our children. With them we can five our own lives over again. In a home where there are 
books there is the opportunity for renewing youth by learning together, and thus holding 
together three of the elements—the home, the school, and the child—on which the happiness and 
security of today and tomorrow depend. 

We are talking much today, too much perhaps, of the school and the teacher’s work and 
responsibility in educating the child. The new emphasis must become again the old empha¬ 
sis upon the home and the parent: what we have left to the school and the public library we must 
in some degree recover for the parent and the home. One sure factor in working such a recovery 
is ability on the part of the parent to follow and share in the child’s desire for knowledge; and, if 
the desire is dormant, to awaken it with pictures and books. The school and mere textbooks cannot 
do all. The public library cannot be substituted, for our average expenditure per capita for libraries 
the country over is only twenty cents. Books and the power to read are no longer a luxury for the 
privileged few. Universal education has made them the necessities of all, whether adult or child; 
and the joy of learning and the companionship and content of common interests are now open to 
every home where the printed and pictured page brings the wide world before parent and child 
alike. The work of the school is thus strengthened for the child, and continued and renewed for 
the adult. Age is banished; life is not only richer and more varied, but it becomes the wish fulfilled 
of a new life with new opportunities, deeper meaning, and multiplied pleasures. 

I have said these things because I believe they should be said and because they are the views, 
the philosophy, if you please, of those who are responsible for the writing and publishing of these 
volumes. They have put this faith into every page and before the thought of making and selling 
books for profit. 

This work expresses another belief, and that is that the foundation of a collection of books in 
home and school is an adequate, interesting, and inclusive work of reference. Two classes of works 
have attempted to meet this need. In the first group fall the many-volumed, technically written, 
expensive encyclopedias, whose merits we all acknowledge but whose heavy articles befog the 
average reader. In the other group are the works designed for popular use or for the use of children, 
interesting, certainly, but for the most part limited in scope and haphazardly arranged. 

Now somewhere between the work for the specialist and the Sunday supplement style there is a 
place for something different and more generally satisfying to all ages, something that the adult and 
the reading child can use with satisfaction and pleasure, something that a scholar will respect and 
that a beginner will appreciate. Such a work may be inclusive yet selective, accurate and at the same 
time interesting. Facts are not forbidding in themselves. The shallow sensationalist shuns them, but 
not the reader who respects his own mind and demands that others respect it. The honest-minded 
child—and every child is essentially honest-minded—seeks facts and will be satisfied with nothing 
less. All that he asks is that they shall not be rammed down his throat by a Gradgrind sort of writer. 



xi 










Knowledge is attractive, real information is a pleasure. Wonder grows with true learning. It 
is a high aim to inform and interest, to teach and inspire, to be accurate and still use words of few 
syllables. I can say for every writer in the long list of contributors to this work that this has been 
his aim, and that more consciously and conscientiously than ever before their combined aim has 
been a work, not only readable, but bound to be read at whatever page you open it. What we have 
aimed to make, in brief, is this: 

An encyclopedic, alphabetically arranged survey of the whole field of knowledge, presented 
with such freshness, vividness, and alluringness, and embellished with such a wealth of illustra¬ 
tion, that it should be as readable as a storybook, without anywhere sacrificing scholarly com¬ 
pleteness or accuracy. 

To put it in another way, our governing purpose throughout this work has been fourfold: 
(1) scholarly accuracy and breadth of view; (2) interesting treatment, obtained by focusing the at¬ 
tention on the most striking, salient, and picturesque aspects of each topic discussed; (3) simplicity, 
clearness, and directness of language, without insulting the reader’s intelligence by trying to “write 
down” to him; (4) a wealth of illustrations which vizualize and dramatize the text. 

The ending of the World War gave us our opportunity. The map of the world had been made 
over and one of the most momentous chapters in history had been written. New histories, new 
geographies, new reference works were demanded. We seized the opportunity to make a work which 
should not only embody the latest developments along these lines, but should reflect the spirit of the 
new age in every department. 

With the volumes before you, I do not need to point out how the interests of all, from those of 
the smallest child to those of the most mature mind, have been kept in view. I should like to 
describe the labors by which accuracy and interest in picture and word have been sought. Many an 
article represents six revisions and the combined efforts of as many scholars and skilful writers. 
The list of contributors, special writers, and departmental editors is a roll which would honor any 
work. 

One especially valuable feature of this work is the Easy Reference Fact-Index in the last 
volume. This is constructed to serve not only as an unusually copious index to the work as a whole, 
but as a handy work of reference. Thousands of names in geography, history, literature, mythology, 
and other fields, that one would not ordinarily expect to find in a work of this nature, are here 
given a place and treated in condensed form; and, so far as it is practical, the salient facts about 
topics occurring in the preceding volumes are summarized. Pronunciations are indicated for all 
words that present difficulties. The reader in search of information on any subject should therefore 
first turn to the proper alphabetical place in the Fact-Index. In many cases he will find there all 
the information he needs. If not, the page numbers will direct him to the place he should consult in 
the main volumes. 

In closing three years’ service as Editor-in-Chief, I may be permitted a few words of com¬ 
mendation and appreciation to all the scholars who have responded promptly and heartily to re¬ 
quests for their aid and cooperation, to the staff of writers, artists, and map-makers who have labored 
in season and out with zeal and unwavering fidelity to the ideals set at the beginning. Above all I 
pay tribute gladly to the unremitting labors of Dr. Samuel B. Harding. More than any other single 
person he has put the stamp of his scholarship and integrity on these volumes. 

And I speak not only for myself but for the whole staff when I say that no group engaged in a 
similar project has had more consistent and loyal support than we have had from the publishers of 
this work. They have shared our every purpose as here expressed, and have never counted the cost 
of any plan or request that would make these volumes more nearly realize this new conception of an 
educational work. 





xii 


Editor-in-Chief. 



PUBLISHERS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


Th® pictures in these volumes form, so to speak, a legion of honor, a select corps chosen from the world’s army of 
illustrations. Of photographs alone, the Art Staff gathered more than half a million from which to make this selection. 
1 hey came from all quarters of the world from the albums of explorers and famous travelers, from the collections 
of scientific men, from official archives, from specialists in remote corners of the globe, from every source, in short, 
known to international experts in the photographic field. 

To these half million photographs there were added in the course of three years’ preparation a large number of 
drawings, photo-diagrams, and illustrations in color, submitted by skilful artists of America and Europe. Then from 
this rare array were gradually selected the “fittest to survive’’—the pictures you see in the ensuing pages. For every 
illustration you find there, you may know that almost a hundred w r ere cast aside. 

Nor was this all. In order to carry out with accuracy and completeness many educational features which had 
never before been attempted, w r hole series of photographs and drawings, particularly in the fields of industry, 
mechanics, and applied science, were specially prepared under the direct supervision of the Art and Editorial Staffs. 

In the selection and preparation of these pictures the guiding principle w r as that each should make a distinct and 
vital contribution to the encyclopedia. W ith the principles of visual education in mind, only those illustrations were 
used which present directly and clearly the appearances of things or places, or w hich express ideas of an instructive or 
inspirational character. In every case the picture serves either to explain and emphasize the text or to provide addi¬ 
tional information. The captions and legends attached to each picture are designed to arrest attention and to point 
out significant details of the subject illustrated. In this way text and picture form a closely knit and powerful edu¬ 
cational alliance. 

T he publishers of this work feel a profound sense of gratitude to the many agencies whose cooperation has made 
possible this system of illustration. They regret that limitations of space make it necessary to confine acknowledg¬ 
ments to special cases. 

CREDITS GIVEN 

In the following list the symbol © indicates that all the pictures in the group which it precedes are copyrighted by the sources acknowledged . Where 
more than a single picture occurs on a page, the position is indicated by the abbreviations: T. (top), B. (bottom), C. (center), L. (left), R. (right), 

M. (middle). 

Adler Bros.; Alabama State Department of Agriculture; A. A. Allen, for many bird photographs; J. Cecil Alter, 3611 (picture of salt beds); 
American Lumberman; American Geographical Society, © 3064; American Museum of Natural History, 132, 134, 153 T. R., 204 B., 289 B., 
290, 342 T., 429, 666, 667, 668, 764, 1017, 1127, 1129, 1132, 1175 B., 1289, 1487, 1495, 1539 T., 1543 T., 1765 B., 1769 T., 1770, 2133, 2365 T., 
2/58 B. R., 3166 T. L., 3197, 3323 T., 3334 T., 3345 T., 3364 T., 3394, 3398, 3442 B., 3562 T., 3776; American Pigeon Journal; American Red 
Cross; American Shipbuilding Corporation; American Telegraph & Telephone Co.; American Tool Works; Anaconda Copper Mining Co.; 
Armour Leather Co.; Armstrong Cork Co.; Asia Magazine, 1942, 1944; Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry.; Atlanta Chamber of Commerce; 
Atlantic Coast Line R. R.; Austin Chamber of Commerce; Automatic Telephone Co. 

Baines News Service, © 1083; Baker & Sons; Baker Sons & Perkins; Barre Quarriers & Manufacturers Association; George Barrie, © 
1831; Bethlehem Steel Co.; Blackwell-Panhandle Sales Co.; E. W. Bliss & Co.; Booklovers’ Magazine, 2167 (picture of cranberries); Boston 
and Maine R. R.; Boston Chamber of Commerce; Boston Historical Society, Boston Photo News, © 471 C. and B. L., 1138, 2841, 2842 T.; 
Botany Worsted Mills; Braun & Co., © 1181, 2693; British Royal Astronomical Society, 3395; British Westinghouse Co., 1052; Brown Bros.. 
© 2800 T., 2803, 3236 T., 3239, and many other photographs; G. V. Buck, 1490, 1901; A. S. Burbank, © 2842 B. 

Canada Department of the Interior; Canada Department of Trade and Commerce; Canada Department of Immigration and Colonization; 
Canadian National Rys.; Canadian Pacific Ry.; Carnation Stock Farms; Central News Photo Service, © 1685 T.; Century Co., © 86 B.; 
Chase & Sanborn; Chesapeake & Ohio Ry.; Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce; Chicago & North Western Ry.; Chicago Historical Society, 
722 T.; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry.; Christian Science Publishing Co., 1081; Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce; T. A. Randall & Co., 
Inc., © 504, from ‘The Clay Worker’; Cleveland Chamber of Commerce; Clinedinst, 3500; Colgate Co.; Colorado Springs Chamber of Com¬ 
merce; Colorado State Board of Immigration; Commercial Cable Co.; United States Committee on Public Information, 3797 B; E. L. Cran¬ 
dall, © 3681; Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd.; Curtis Aeroplane & Motor Corporation, 3683; Asahel Curtis, © 3686, 3689 (pictures Nos. 2, 3, 5); 
Curtis & Cameron, 224, © by Edwin A. Abbey, from a Copley Print © by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston; also 2923. 

Denver Tourist and Publicity Bureau; Detroit Publishing Co., ©562,2401 B.;Diamond Crystal Salt Co.; Joseph Dixon Crucible Co.; 
Dodd, Mead & Co., © 2859, 2862 B., 2863, 3149, from ‘Scott’s Last Expedition’; Doubleday, Page & Co., © 57, 936, 937, 2384 B. L., 2569, 
2756 B. R., 2757 R., also 3203 (pictures Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19), from ‘The Shell Book’; Duluth Commercial Club; E. I. DuPont 
de Nemours & Co., 1044 T., 1045, 1046 T.; E. P. Dutton & Co., © 3307 R., by permission. 

Eastern Aircraft, © 2169; Eastman Kodak Co.; Esterbrook Steel Pen Mfg. Co.; Estey Organ Co.; Dr. A. J. Evans, © 28. 

David G. Fairchild and Mrs. Marian H. B. Fairchild, © 1914, from their ‘Book of Monsters’; Famous Players, Lasky Corporation; 
Field Museum; Fleischmann Co.; Florida East Coast Ry.; Foxboro Co. 

General Electric Co.; Geographical Review, © 1948; A. C. Gilbert <k Co.; German-American Button Co.,© 549, 550, from ‘Art in Buttons’; 
Gilliams Service, © 579 B. L., 2969 B., Goldwyn Studios; Goodyear Rubber Co.; Gordon Fireworks Co.; Goss Presses; Grand Trunk Ry. 

Harcourt, Brace & Co., © 3639, from ‘Queen Victoria’ by Lytton Strachey; Hardwick & Magee; Harper & Bros., © 139, 140, 141, 142, 
154 (drawings of ants), from ‘Nature’s Craftsmen’ by McCook, also 777, from ‘Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War'; Harris & Ewing, © 
109, 379 B., 646, 1000, 1225, 1453 B. L„ 1454, 1581, 1679, 1693, 1993, 2011, 2284, 2589 Insert, 2732, 2985 No. 3, 3059, 3243, 3254, 3306 B„ 
3307 T., 3595, 3596, 3599, 3600, 3680, 3682 B., 3685, 3734; Romeyn B. A. Hough, for many pictures of trees and foliage; Fred Harvey, © 2933; 
J. E. Haynes, © 3819; Wm. Heinemann, © 2864, from ‘The Home of the Blizzard’ by Sir Douglas Mawson; Hendey Machine Co.; R. F. 
Hildebrand; Holabird & Roche, 188; Frederick Hollyer, © 1221, 1391; Henry Holt & Co., © 2142, 2143 B. L., from ‘Elements of Geography, 
by Salisbury, Barrows and Towers, also 2821 T., 2823 T., 2827 B., from ‘The Living Plant’, by Ganong. 

Illinois Central R. R.; Illinois State Department of Agriculture; Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce; Independence Hall, Curator, 1989; 
International Film Co., © 8, 17 (portrait insert), 81, 138, 276, 325 B., 383, 467, 505, 631, 709, 719 B., 739, 741, 747 T., 787, /9/, 819 (large 
picture), 978, 1004 T., 1014, 1259, 1286, 1315, 1441, 1442, 1443, 1445, 1447, 1458 T„ 1579, 2085, 2120, 2141 T., 2144, 2369, 2426, 2552, 2577, 
2750, 2899, 3005, 3227 B., 3523 T., 3556, 3613, 3682 T.; International Harvester Co., 47, 89, 810, 889,1286,1579 B., 1631, 1735 B. L., 1909 T„ 
2908 B., 3064 (T. 4 pictures), 3142; Iowa State Department of Agriculture. 

xiii 


T. A. Jaggar, Jr., © 3060; Johnson & Sons, © 1725; Clifton Johnson, 409, 863, 867, 1433 T„ 2163 T., 2168 T„ 2169 T., 2358, 2453, 2456. 
2719 T. R., C. insert (Capitol), 2761 B., 3008 T., 3009 B., 3295 B. R., 3631 T.; J. W. Johnson, © 1648; Sir Harry Johnson, 913 B. R., 3283. 

Kadel & Herbert, © 3 B., 2488 B.; Kansas State Board of Agriculture; Kaufman-Fabry, © 721, 722 B., 723 B., 724, 725 T.; Keystone 
View Co., © 46 B., 71 T. L„ 186 B.L., 250 T.R., 268 B., 269, 272 T.R. and B.L., 346 B., 445 B.,471 T. L.,508 T. R„ 628, 629,630,736 B., 737 
T.L., 738, 812 B., 815, 818, 842 T.R., 843 C., 865 B.R., 902 T., 951 B. 3, 1040 B.L., 1049, 1258, 1380, 1727, 1730, 1732, 1734 B., 1735 T.R., 
1761 M.L., 1815, 1820, 1838, 1839 B., 2077 B., 2171, 2172, 2173, 2225 B.L., 2459 B.R., 2467, 2487, 2499 T.L., 2512, 2521 M„ 2525, 2535 T„ 
2595 B.L., 2741 T., 2959 B„ 3013, 3014, 3072 B., 3234 B., 3235 T„ 3236 B„ 3237, 3238, 3288, 3289, 3292, 3445, 3769 T.; E. E. Kunselman, 
© 200 . 

‘La Caverne d’Altamira’, 2628; John Lane & Co., 1365, from ‘The Path of Glory’; Lanston Monotype Co.; Lenox, Inc.; Leslie-Judge Co., 
© 217; Edwin Levick, © 657, 658, 659, 2489, 2490 T„ 2491, 2492 T.R., 2493 M„ 2497, 2756 L., 3753, 3754 B., 3755 (pictures Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4); 
W. T. Littig Co., © 2485; Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce; Silas A. Lottridge, © 2409 T.F.; Louisiana State Department of Commerce 
and Immigration. 

The Macmillan Co., © 11, from ‘The Acropolis of Athens’ by Prof. D’Ooge; McCullock, © 966,1833; Horace G. McFarland, © 553, 554, 
1501., 2455, 2595 M.R.; McGraw Tire & Rubber Co.; David McKay, © 760, 761; Donald McLeish, © 1097, 1189, 1476, 3412, 3413 T„ 3419, 
3421; Madison Chamber of Commerce; Marshall Field & Co.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 28 T. 3, 181 T.R., 1146 B., 1526, 1529, 1875, 
3442 T.; Mexican Petroleum Co.; Mile High Photo Studio; E. A. Mills, 357 B., 358, 843 T.L., 844, 845; Minister of Agriculture, Edmonton. 
Can.; Minneapolis Civic & Commerce Association; Missouri Pacific R.R.; Modern Hospital Publishing Co.; Montpelier Board of Trade; Morse 
Dry Dock Co., 1517; Gabriel Moulin, © 576, 3125; Wm. J. Moxley Co. 

Nahigian Bros.; Nashville Commercial Club; National Association of Audubon Societies, 258, 439 B., 446, 660 L., 1053 M., 1544, 2062 T., 
2179, 2508 L., 2544, 2600, 2607 T.L., 2699, 2838 B., 2943, 2961 T. R. and B., 2979, 3028, 3308, 3399 T.L.. 3494, 3506 T., 3733; National Biscuit 
Co.; National Geographic Magazine, © 585, 814, 2752; John J. Newbegin, © 2069 T.R., 3386 R., from ‘Something About Sugar’ by Geo. M. 
Rolph, New Jersey State Department of Conservation; E. M. Newman, © 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 B. 5, 46 T. 2, 88, 102, 119, 161, 166, 181 B., 
182 B., 190, 203, 206, 229 M.R., 270, 273, 309, 323 B„ 325 T. 2, 372, 374 B„ 375, 448, 449, 495, 526, 532 B„ 566, 567, 590, 638, 736 T„ 742, 
743 B„746, 750T..821 T.L. and B., 824, 871, 896, 956, 994, 995, 1093 T., 1094, 1103 T., 1104 B„ 1105 B., 1154 T„ 1155, 1157, 1158, 1161, 
1190, 1192, 1199, 1284 T„ 1332, 1342 T. 2 and B. 2, 1343, 1345, 1346, 1347 B., 1348, 1349, 1350, 1353, 1465, 1504 T„ 1578, 1601, 1602 T., 1603 
T. and B., 1678 B„ 1723, 1724 T„ 1741, 1766 T„ 1769 B., 1807 B., 1809 B., 1810 T„ 1827, 1860, 1872, 1886, 1902, 2110, 2186, 2276, 2313. 
2439 B„ 2440, 2442, 2534, 2535 T.,-2644 T„ 2645, 2646, 2647, 2651, 2657 T„ 2665, 2705 T„ 2707, 2708, 2742 B., 2748 T„ 2768 T., 2856, 2887, 
3051 T.L., 3092, 3196, 3257 B., 3284, 3299, 3302, 3303 T„ 3304, 3316, 3318, 3402 T„ 3403,13425, 3557, 3558, 3560, 3640, 3642, 3665, 3831, 3834 
T., 3837; New Orleans Association of Commerce; NewYork Herald Service, 3790, 3799; New York State Museum; New York Times,© 212 
T. R. and M. R.; New York Zoological Park, many flower and animal studies by Elwin R. Sanborn and Hermann W. Merkel; Nitzsche, 2761 
T. 2; Norfolk and Western Ry.; North Carolina State Geological and Economical Survey; North Dakota Commissioner of Immigration; 
Northern Pacific Ry. 

W. B. Oglesby Paper Cq.; Ohio State Geological Survey; Oklahoma Farmer Stockman; Oliver Plow Works; Olympia Chamber of Com¬ 
merce; Omaha Chamber of Commerce; Oneida Community, Ltd.; Ozark Playground Association. 

Packard Automobile Co.; The Palmolive Co.; Pan American Union, 3286; Pensacola Shipbuilding Co.; Philadelphia Chamber of Com¬ 
merce; Philadelphia Commercial Museum; Pillsbury Flour Mills; Pittsburgh Steamship Co.; Plymouth Cordage Co.; Herbert G. Ponting, 
© 525, 989, 990, 1097, 1754, 1862, 1863, 1866, 1867, 1873; Popular Science Monthly,© 2318 B., 2503, 2675, 2751, 3807 T.L., Portland (Me.) 
Chamber of Commerce; Portland (Ore.) Chamber of Commerce; Publishers’ Photo Service, © 71 C. and T.R., 234, 235 T., 812 T., 813, 1324, 
1389, 1559, 1561, 1600, 1603 M., 1604 T„ 1761 C. (insert), 1839 T. 2, 1840, 1842, 1845, 1847, 1865, 1870, 1871, 1943, 2210, 2212 T., 2217, 2219, 
2343 B., 2349 B. 2, 2355 T., 2356 T„ 2399, 2401 T„ 2402 T„ 2403, 2459 (picture of sewing machines), 2643, 2500, 2543, 2589, T„ 2595 C., 2618 
2622 B„ 2624, 2681 B„ 2683 B., 2719 B.R. and picture of hats, 2743, 2777, 2782 B., 2865 T„ 2867 T.M., 2886, 2901 T„ 3216, 3219, 3279, 3280, 
3281 B„ 3287, 3300 B„ 3439 T„ 3508, 3535, 3537, 3621, 3622 T„ 3623, 3649 T.L., and M.L., 3654, 3655, 3656, 3666, 3667, 3785 B.; Putnam & 
Valentine, © 3699. 

Raymond & Whitcomb Co., © 2275; Regal Shoe Co.; Fred Roe, © 1369, Rookwood Pottery; A. L. Root, 360 T., 362 B. 

St. Nicholas Magazine, © 349 T.; St. Paul Association; Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce; Samuels Clothing Co.; San Antonio 
Chamber of Commerce; Scientific American, © 59, 137, 164, 342 B„ 364 T„ 1001, 1039, 1040 B.R., 1327, 1460, 1461, 1480, 1508, 1797, 1798, 
1799, 1800, 1802, 1996, 2043 B„ 2321, 2365 M., 2428, 2450, 2579, 2598, 2667 B„ 2960 B„ 3116, 3342, 3397, 3626, 3796; Seattle Chamber of 
Commerce; Smithsonian Institution, South Dakota State Commissioner of Immigration; Southern Alluvial Land Association; Southern Ry. 
System; Spencerian Steel Pen Co.; Spokane Chamber of Commerce; Frederick A. Stokes Co., © 2862 T., reproduced by permission from ‘The 
North Pole' by Peary; Mrs. P. Stratham, © 584 T., from ‘Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage'; Swift & Co. 

Taber Prang Art Co., 785, 1141, 2155, 2957, 3711; Tampa Board of Trade; Texas & Pacific Ry.; Texas Gulf Sulphur Co.; Paul Thompson, 
© 1022 C., 1739, 2490 B., 2493 T. L., 2494, 2495, 2496, 3369; John P. Troy, © 827. 

Underwood & Underwood, © 39 T.L., 74, 443 (picture No. 2), 541 2501, 3386 L., 3496 T., 3500; Union Pacific System; University Society, 
Inc., 752; Fisher Unwin, 3472, from ‘Alfred Lord Tennyson and His Friends’ by H. H. H. Cameron; United States Department of Agriculture; 
United States Forestry Service; United States Signal Corps. 

Vickers, Ltd., 320; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2882 T. L.; Vilter Manufacturing Co. 

Waltham W T atch Co.; Waterbury Watch Co.; Weister, © 2597 T.; Western Newspaper Union, © 39 T.R.; West Virginia Paper Co.; Geo. 
White, 579 B.R.; H. C. White, © 3510; Jas. White & Co., 1453 B. R.; White Star Line; J. C. Whitney Co.; Wide World Photos, © 62 T.R., 
441, 1793, 2319, 2959 T., 3413 B.; Wilder & Wentworth, © 1247, 1248, from ‘Personal Identification’; Winchester Repeating Arms Co.; Wis¬ 
consin State Geological and Natural History Survey; Wright Bros., 55 T., 56, 62 T. L. and B. 3; Wyoming State Commissioner of Immigration. 

Yale & Towne Manufacturing Co.; Yerkes Observatory, 2318, 2433, 3340. 

The publishers also desire to acknowledge the courtesy of those who have given permission for the use of copy¬ 
righted text matter, as follows: 

Henry Holcomb Bennett, for permission to use his poem ‘The Flag Goes By’, 1288. 

Dodd, Mead & Co., for permission to adapt the story of ‘The Blue Bird’ by Maurice Maeterlinck, 2113. Holders of the American copy¬ 
rights of 1907, 1909, 1911. 

Doubleday, Page & Co., for permission to use the ‘Story of Mowgli’ compiled from Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’, 1927. 

Harper & Brothers, for permission to adapt the story of ‘Greyfriar’s Bobby’ by Eleanor Atkinson, 1024. 

Hedder & Stoughton, for permission to adapt the story of ‘Peter Pan’ by Sir James Barrie, 335. Holders of the English copyright. 

International Correspondence Schools, for permission to reprint table, ‘What and When to Plant in the Vegetable Garden’, 1397. 
Rudyard Kipling, for special permission to adapt the ‘Story of Mowgli’ from the ‘Jungle Book’, 1927. 

The Macmillan Co., for permission to reprint ‘A Day’s Dietary for a Child Ten Years Old’ from ‘Feeding the Family’ by Mrs. Rose, 1322. 

Methuen & Co., Ltd., for permission to adapt the story of ‘The Blue Bird’ by Maurice Maeterlinck, 2113. Holders of the English copyright. 

Charles Scribner’s Sons, for permission to adapt the story of ‘Peter Pan’ by Sir James Barrie, 335. Holders of the American copyright. 
Also for permission to reprint the poem ‘The Name of France’ by Dr. Henry van Dyke, 1344. 

Youth’s Companion, for permission to reprint the poem ‘The Flag Goes By’ by Henry Holcomb Bennett,1288. 


XIV 





IT ODD TIMES when you are just looking for “something interesting to read,” without 
any special plan in mind, this list will help you. Divided as it is into broad groups, it 
offers a fascinating variety of subjects for selection. With this as a guide, you may 
wander through storyland, visit far-away countries, meet famous people of ancient and 
modem times, review history’s most brilliant incidents, explore the marvels of nature and science, 
play games—in short, find whatever suits your fancy of the moment. This list contains, how¬ 
ever, only a small proportion of the articles in this one volume, and is not intended to serve as a 
table of contents, an index, or a study-guide. For these purposes consult the Fact-Index and the 

Study Outlines in Volume Eight. 


TALES FOR THE STORY HOUR 


The Shield of Achilles. 9 

How the Tricolor Came Back to Metz.103 

Children of the Desert.167 

The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.169 

How Jason and the Argonauts Found the Golden Fleece.193 

Bayeta’s Grandmother’s Blanket.204 

How Arthur Won His Crown .223 

Peter Pan, the Boy who Would Never Grow Up.335 

The Woodman’s Tale of Johnny Bear.351 

LITTLE TALKS ON GREAT THINGS: BY ARTHUR MEE 

Ambition.107 

The Honor of the Playing Field.253 

PARENT AND CHILD; SCHOOL AND HOME 

Some Simple Aids in Addition*. 18 

When a New World Dawns on Youth. . 25 

Algebra and the Problems It Solves. 92 

Apperception, or How We Put Two and Two Together.158 

Interesting Facts about Arithmetic.196 

Being a Good Mother to Baby.291 

HIGH LIGHTS IN HISTORY’S PAGEANT 

A Newly Discovered Chapter in History. 27 

The Goth who Sacked Imperial Rome .. 73 

How Alexander the Great Conquered the World. 85 

What Wise King Alfred Did for England. 90 

How America Got into the History Books . .109 

The Argonne Battle—From “Zero Hour” to Victory.193 

How the English “Sea Hawks” Beat the Armada..210 

The Glorious Reign of the Great Augustus.257 

The Mysterious Aztecs and Their Vanished Civilization.288 

Empires that Flourished When the World was Young.295 

SOME FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

Jane Addams and the Work of Hull House .. 16 

How a Modern Viking Found the South Pole. .119 

A Woman’s Long Fight for Woman’s Right to Vote..146 


XV 














































Here and There in Volume 1 

Aristotle. Master Mind of Greece.195 

How a Barber’s Apprentice Revolutionized Spinning.208 

“The Wisest, Brightest, Meanest of Mankind”.300 

Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefields”.337 

The Martyred Archbishop of Canterbury.358 

Bismarck, the Man of “Blood and Iron”.427 

Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s War Premier.466 

THE STORY OF THE PRESIDENTS 

Sturdy John Adams and His Fight for Independence. 12 

John Quincy Adams, who Always Did His Duty. 14 

How Chester A. Arthur Surprised His Country.222 

TOURS THROUGH NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA 

America’s Treasure House of the North. 74 

Beautiful Alberta, Land of Golden Grain. 82 

The World’s Greatest River System.105 

Along South America’s Mighty Backbone.122 

The Amazing Growth of Argentina.190 

The Queen City of Maryland.322 

Bolivia and Its Mountains of Untouched Wealth.*.448 

Historic Boston, New England’s Metropolis.469 

The Mysterious Land of the Amazon.493 

The Sunset Gateway Province of Canada.510 

THE STORY OF THE STATES 

Alabama, the Heart of the New Industrial South. 70 

The Wonderland of the American Southwest.199 

Farms, Forests, and Mines of the “Bear State”.207 

TRAVEL-VIEWS OF LANDS ACROSS THE SEAS 

The Fabled Kingdom of Prester John. 3 

Among the Fierce Tribesmen of Afghanistan. 31 

The Black Man’s Vast and Mysterious Continent. 32 

The Alps and What They Do for Europe.101 

At the Foot of the World—A Vast Continent of Eternal Ice.145 

Unhappy Armenia, Prey of the Spoiler.211 

Asia, the Great Mother of Civilization.226 

Violet-Crowned Athens, Mother of the Arts.249 

A Trip Across the Bottom of Our Old Atlantic.254 

The Island-Continent of Australia.261 

The “Crazy-Quilt” that was Austria-Hungary.270 

Brave and Thrifty Belgium—A Land of Battlefields.372 

A Day in Benares, Holy City of the Hindus.380 

The Great Busy Capital of Germany.385 

At Home with the Wild Men of Borneo.467 

SPORTS AND GAMES AND OTHER WORTH-WHILE THINGS TO DO 

Water Pets and How to Keep Them.162 

The Value of Athletics.251 

Baseball.338 

Basketball.343 

Billiards. 392 

Boats and Boating.441 

Bowling.475 

Boxing.476 

Boy Scouts and Their Work.479 

THE WONDER WE CALL “LIFE” 

Studying the “ Machinery ” of Animals and Plants.121 

The Varied Web of Animal Life.127 

xvi 


V 



















































I 


Here and There in Volume 1 

The Wonderful Science of Living Things 393 

The Busy Career of a Drop of Blood . 437 

The Everlasting Wonder of Your Brain. ^ . . 486 

IN THE PLANT AND ANIMAL WORLD 

The Little “Adams” of the Plant Family. 90 

Queer Habits of the Amoeba. .U3 

Amazing Instances of Animal Behavior. 130 

Giant Monsters of Long Ago..132 

The Marvels Hidden in an Ant-Hill. 139 

The Good and III that Bacteria Do. 302 

Little Night Policemen and Their Sensitive Wings.345 

Brother Bear— A True Gentleman of the Woods.349 

Mr. Beaver—Mason, Carpenter, and Engineer. 356 

In the Workshop of the Bees. ‘ ’ ’ 359 

The Armored Bandits of the Insect World. 366 

Our Charming Neighbors in Feathers.400 

Leading Families Among our Bird People. 413 

Birds’ Songs and Houses. !!!!!!!!!!.!!. 421 

M A R.V ELS OF SCIENCE AND INVENTION 

The Invisible Ocean in which We Live. 50 

The Soaring Motor-Car of the Air. 54 

Anesthetics and the Sleep that Knows No Pain.4 

How the Fighting Antitoxins Defend Our Lives.151 

The Wondrous Science of the Stars.239 

The Latest Answer to the Old Question, “What is Matter?”.256 

The Automobile and How It Works.274 

Flying Gas-Bags from Montgolfier to Zeppelin.310 

How Barometers Foretell Weather and Measure Mountains.333 

THE WORLD AT WORK 

Bookkeeping Made Easy—Some Simple Methods. 5 

How the Farmer Feeds the World. 43 

Banks: How They Put Dollars to Work. 327 

The “Bulls” and “Bears” in the Pit.440 

The Bridge Builder and His Work.505 

GUIDE-POSTS TO LITERATURE, ART, AND MUSIC 

American Authors and what They Wrote .Ill 

The Ugly Duckling who Turned into a Swan.121 

Architecture, the Oldest of the Arts.176 

The Boy who Studied Music by the Light of the Moon.300 

Balzac and His Wonderful Panorama of Human Life.323 

Beethoven, Lonely King of the World of Music.365 

The Woman Painter who Kept a Private “Zoo”.453 

RAMBLES THROUGH FACTLAND 

How the World Made Its A B C’s .100 

Who the Twelve Apostles Were.157 

The Big Tubes that Carry Water to Town.163 

The Story of Armor Through the Ages.214 

How Nations are Organized for War.216 

Babylonian Myths of Life and Death.299 

The Romantic Career of the Banana.324 

Voices of History in the Bells.377 

The Bible, the World’s Book of Books.387 

The Wonder of a Printed Book.455 

The Daily Bread of all the World..496 

The Brick and Its Distinguished Place in History.502 


xvii 

A 






































































































* 




















4 

















































AACHEN (a'KSn), Germany. It was the year 1000 
after Christ, and the people of Europe, according to 
old stories, were daily expecting the end of the world. 
Otto III, the young and flighty 
ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, 
had come to Aachen, the old Ger¬ 
man capital 44 miles west of the 
Rhine, and announced that he was 
going to open the sacred tomb of 
Charlemagne. This lay under a 
marble slab beneath the dome of 
the chapel built by that great 
emperor himself, with marble col¬ 
umns and other materials taken 
from the classical structures of 
Rome, Ravenna, and other 
Italian cities. 

The Ancient Tomb 
of Charlemagne 
When the royal sepulcher was 
opened the torch’s flickering light 
disclosed a strange sight. The 
body of the great emperor, clothed 
in white, was seated on a huge 
marble chair. One of the hands 
held a scepter and on the head 
was the imperial crown. The spirit of the man who 
200 years before had founded an empire greater than 
the world had seen since 


WHERE THE DEAD EMPEROR SAT FOR 
THREE HUNDRED YEARS 


“On this chair—a crown on his head, a globe 
in one hand, a scepter in the other, the imperial 
mantle over his shoulders, sat Charlemagne in his 
tomb, in which attitude he remained for three hun¬ 
dred and fifty-two years .”—Victor Hugo. 


the days of the Roman 
Caesars seemed to sur¬ 
vive in death. Before 
the commanding dig¬ 
nity of that huge figure 
the young emperor 
quailed. The torch fell 
from his grasp and lie 
rushed out of the tomb, 
ordering the stone 
replaced. Two years 
later Otto III was 
buried in that same 
chapel. 

One hundred and 
sixty years later the 
emperor Frederick Bar- 
barossa again opened 
the tomb. The marble throne, crown, and scepter 
of Charlemagne were taken to add dignity and strength 
to Frederick’s imperial projects, and the bones of 


THE CATHEDRAL AND ITS NEIGHBORING SPIRES 


This is a view in Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle. The cathedral is shown 
on the left. That peaked and high-arched chapel, which is now a part of 
the cathedral, contained the bones of the mighty emperor Charlemagne. 
Nearby are other historic buildings grouped about this historic spot. 


Charlemagne were placed in a shrine north of the 
chapel, where they remain today. Every seven years 
they are exhibited to visitors. After Barbarossa, 
31 emperors and kings were 
crowned in the marble chair that 
had once been the throne of the 
first great medieval monarch. 

The chapel and tomb of Charle¬ 
magne, now the central part of 
the cathedral of Aachen, are the 
heart of the city even to this day. 
Aachen is believed to have been 
the great emperor’s birthplace, 
but it owes its historic fame to 
Charlemagne’s fondness for its 
hot sulphur springs, which led 
him to make it his favorite place 
of residence. These unfailing 
springs still make Aachen a famous 
resort, where visitors seek health 
from the warm waters in which 
the mighty ruler of the Franks 
splashed and swam nearly 12 
centuries ago. 

Nearby Charlemagne built his 
palace and held his court. Here 
were gathered the great scholars of the day, teaching 
in the Palace School, and the gay life of the court 

went forward as 
merrily as it does now 
in the modem hotels 
which have replaced 
the ancient buildings. 

Treaties of 
Aix-la-Chapelle 
Two important trea¬ 
ties were concluded at 
meetings or congresses 
held in Aachen, or Aix- 
la-Chapelle as it is 
named in French. The 
first, signed in 1668, 
ended a war begun by 
Louis XIV of France to 
enforce certain rights 
claimed in behalf of his 
wife in what was then 
the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium). The other, 
in 1748, ended the struggle known as the War of the 
Austrian Succession. 



















AACHEN 


ABRAHAM 



Aachen became a part of the kingdom of Prussia 
in 1815. Today it is an important manufacturing 
center, because of the coal fields that lie near at hand. 
Its chief trade is in cloth and silk, leather, glass buttons, 
soap, timber, and wine. It is one of the chief railroad 
centers on the German border, and it was from here 
that the German attack on Belgium was launched 
in 1914 at the beginning of the World War. Population, 
about 150,000. 

ABBREVIATIONS. In writing compositions and in 
printing articles in books, magazines, and news¬ 
papers, only certain abbreviations are used, which 
J are sanctioned by established custom. Signs like 
and are not, properly speaking, 

abbreviations, but symbols, though we can see in 
the sign the Latin word et (“and”) from which 
it arose. Letters in abbreviations are sometimes 
doubled to indicate a plural or superlative. Thus 
p.means “page,” and pp. means “pages”; / in music 
means “loudly” (forte), and jj “very loudly” (fortis¬ 
simo). A list of the abbreviations most commonly 
used in printing will be found in the last volume 
of this work. 

Ab elard, Petek (1079-1142). All was astir 
about the cathedral of Paris—not the great Gothic 
Notre Dame of our day, but its plainer and smaller 
predecessor of the early 12th century. For the 
morning bell had rung and from the taverns and 
hospices and boarding-houses a motley stream of 
students, laughing and chattering in a mixture of 
Latin and their mother tongues, was pouring into the 
inclosures to listen to the lectures of the various 
masters. In the classrooms they sat upon the straw- 
strewn floor, the right knee raised to support the 
waxed tablets, and for six or seven hours they in¬ 
dustriously took notes. In those early days books 
were few and the teaching was almost all by word of 
mouth. 

Of all the masters, Abelard was the most learned 
and the most brilliant. The eldest son of the lord of 
a village in Brittany, he had left castle, the chase, 
and the life of a noble to become a scholar. 

For a time he himself had studied in Paris; but he 
soon surpassed his teacher in learning, and at the 
early age of 22 he too had become a master and had 
begun to teach. He was especially interested in logic, 
or the art of reasoning, which was not unlike the de¬ 
bating of today. Later he became proficient in 
theology also, and was soon known as the leading 
scholar of his time. Students flocked by thousands 
to hear his lectures, and his books in hand-written 
copies—especially ‘Sic et Non’ (‘Yes and No’)— 
were read by all learned men. This book was so 
called because it was made up of such questions as 
these: 

Should human faith be based upon reason, or no? 

Is God one, or no? 

Is God a substance, or no? 

Are the flesh and blood of Christ in very truth and 
essence present in the sacrament of the altar, or no? 


Then came Abelard’s romantic but unhappy love 
affair with Heloise, a beautiful and accomplished 
girl, one of his pupils. As marriage would interfere 
with his rising in the church, Abelard and Heloise 
were secretly united. Their union soon became known 
and they separated in circumstances of the greatest 
pain and anguish. 

Abelard’s popularity made enemies for him among 
those who were jealous of his influence, and others 
disagreed with his teachings. For he taught that 
nothing should be accepted unless it could be proved 
true, while they believed that religious faith should 
come first. These opponents, led by Saint Bernard, 
finally triumphed and Abelard was condemned as a 
heretic by the church. Broken in health and saddened 
by his unhappy love affair, he retired to a monastery 
where he soon died. But his fame lived after him, 
and largely as a result of his teachings the University 
of Paris soon became the chief center of learning in all 
Europe. 

The noble character of Heloise, as shown in her letters to 
Abelard after their separation, has won the admiration of all 
ages. When she died, after long living as a nun, she was 
buried by his side. In 1800 their remains were removed to 
Paris, where they now rest in the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise. 
A figure of Abelard reclines on the tomb and by its side 
stands a statue of Heloise. 

ABERDEEN (db-er-den'), Scotland. Rushing south¬ 
ward every week-day from this fourth largest city of 
Scotland, go long fish express trains carrying the 
catch of the sturdy North Sea fishermen—herring, 
halibut, sole, and the like—to the markets of London; 
for Aberdeen now rivals Grimsby, the great English 
fishing port, as a center of the British steam trawling 
industry. 

Aberdeen is situated on a bay of the North Sea, 
130 miles northeast of Edinburgh, and is the chief 
city of northern Scotland. It is sometimes called the 
“Silver City by the Sea” because of the gleam of its 
gray granite buildings, especially after a heavy rain¬ 
fall. In addition to its fisheries and granite quarries 
it has large manufactures of woolen and linen goods, 
paper, jams, and preserved foods. There are also 
large breweries, distilleries and chemical works. 

Aberdeen was already an important place in the 
12th century. It was burned by the English king 
Edward III in 1336, but it was soon rebuilt and 
extended. Aberdeen University was founded in 1494. 
The city is well governed, and owns and operates its 
waterworks, electric light plant, street railways, 
markets, and cemeteries. Population, about 170,000. 
Abraham. Two thousand years before Christ, at 
a time when the Egyptian and Babylonian civiliza¬ 
tions were already grown old and enfeebled, there 
dwelt at Ur in the idolatrous land of Chaldaea— 
which was at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates 
rivers—a man named Abram. And the Lord said 
unto him: 

“Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, 
and from thy father’s house unto a land that I will 
shew thee. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

2 






| Founding the Hebrew Nation 

“And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 
bless thee, and make thy name great.” 

So Abraham, as he was later named, journeyed 
westward at the call of God to a new land, and settled 
in Palestine. There he led a patriarchal life sur¬ 
rounded by his flocks and 


ABYSSINIA | 


herds, man servants and 
maid servants, sons and 
daughters. Thus he be¬ 
came the founder of the 
Hebrew nation. 

Abraham was accompanied 
in his migration by Sarai 
(Sarah), his wife, and by his 
nephew Lot, whose wife was 
turned into a pillar of salt 
at the destruction of the cities 
of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

A son Isaac was born to 
Abraham and Sarah in their 
old age and became his heir 
to the exclusion of Ishmael. 

The intended sacrifice of 
Isaac at the command of 
Jehovah (Yahveh) and his 
rescue is one of the best 
known stories of the Old 
Testament. According to the 
Bible narrative (Genesis xi- 
xxv), Abraham died at the 

age of 175 years and was buried at the side of Sarah. 
ABYSSIN'IA. When Portuguese explorers in the 
15th century first made their way from the coast of 
the Red Sea into eastern Africa, they found in the 
midst of its wild mountains what 



Abyssinia is about one and one-quarter times the 
size of Texas. With the exception of the small negro 
republic of Liberia on the west coast, it is the only 
part of Africa which is not under the control of some 
European country. From the modern capital at 
Addis Abeba, in the cen- 


HOW ABYSSINIA IS SHUT OFF FROM THE SEA 


tral part, the country is 
still governed as a feudal 
monarchy. Religious lead¬ 
ership has passed to the 
‘ Coptic” Christian church 
of Egypt, and the nu¬ 
merous clergy exercise 
great influence. In the 
whole realm there is only 
one school worthy of the 
name. A standing army 
of 250,000 men is main¬ 
tained by the crown. 

The whole male popula¬ 
tion is warlike, the men 
rarely appearing in public 
places without their long 
curved knives or their 
spears and shields. Euro¬ 
peans have had several 
tastes of their prowess. In 1868 the emperor 
Theodore III imprisoned the British consul and his 
followers, and the British Government sent an ex¬ 
pedition to free them. The capital was stormed 
and captured after fierce fight- 


they thought was the kingdom of barefooted magnificence in abyssinia i n g ( Theodore shooting himself 


Prester John, a fabled Christian 
monarch, whose power, wealth, 
and magnificence were the theme 
of many a medieval legend. 

There was some basis for 
this belief, for in the 4th cen¬ 
tury a.d. Abyssinia, then known 
as Ethiopia, had been converted 
to Christianity through the 
efforts of St. Athanasius of 
Alexandria. Then the Moham¬ 
medans swept over northern 
Africa in the 7th century, cutting 
off the country completely from 
civilization. As the historian 
Gibbon says, “encompassed by 
the enemies of their religion, the 



when told that the city gates had 
given way. Later, during the 
rule of the famous Menelik, 
Italy established colonies on 
the Red Sea coast and sought 
to extend her power inland. 
War followed, and in 1896 the 
Italian army was disastrously 
defeated at Adowa. Ten years 
later Italy joined with France 
and Great Britain in guaran¬ 
teeing Abyssinia against further 
losses of territory. 

A Country without a Coast Line 
All the Abyssinian coast line, 
however, already had been seiz¬ 
ed, and today the country is 


Ethinnianq <slpr>t, for near a thoil- The two gentlemen in the picture wearing shoes are c ut off entirely from the Sea. 
J.imopians Slept- ioi near a uiuu the representatives of the Sultan of Turkey and his J ... 

sand years, forgetful of the world aide at the Abyssinian court. The barefooted man ine r rencn, with a narrow- 
by whom they were forgotten.” SJJSftS ffiM , s b o“ b S2 C coSrt g au S e railwa y extending from 

Jibuti toward Addis Abeba, 
control the commerce of Abyssinia, which consists 
chiefly of hides, coffee, and beeswax. The natives 
are mostly small farmers and cattle-growers, and 
honey forms a large part of their diet. Barley, wheat, 
millet, hops, and tobacco are raised in moderate 
quantities. The soil is fertile, and most regions 
yield two crops a year. 


pings, 

What the adventurous Portu¬ 
guese explorers found was a strange remnant of this 
primitive Christianity. 

The Negus Negusti (“King of Kings”) of Ethiopia, 
as the Abyssinian monarchs still call themselves, 
do not encourage the Prester John theory. They 
prefer to claim descent from King Solomon and the 
Queen of Sheba! 


Gained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

















ACADIA 


|ABYSSINIA 

Away from the railway, transportation over the 
primitive mountains and desert trails is possible only 
with pack-horses, mules, and camels. The towns 
rarely exceed 5,000 population, and often move from 
place to place as the supplies of firewood become 
exhausted. 

Big game is plentiful, especially the elephant, two¬ 
horned rhinoceros, lion, leopard, lynx, and jackal. 
The hippopotamus and the crocodile are numerous 
in the Hawash River, that strange stream which 
wanders eastward from the mountains for 500 miles 
and then is lost in Lake Aussa, 60 miles from the 
coast. Westward from the mountains flows the 
Abai, which crosses into the Egyptian Sudan and 
becomes the famous Blue Nile (see Nile). The 
people of Abyssinia are mostly of mixed Egyptian 
and Semitic (Arabian and Jewish) origin, with a 
strong strain of negro blood. Population, about 
5,000,000; of Addis Abeba, 35,000. 

ACACIA ( a-ka'sha ). All over the warmer parts of 
the earth—especially in Australia, Africa, and South 
and Central America—are to be found the thorny, 
pod-bearing shrubs and trees of this great genus of 
plants, whose clustered flowers and feather-like leaves 
so much resemble those of the locust tree of the 
United States that the latter is called the “false 
acacia.” Gum arabic and gum Senegal are produced 
by certain African species, while the bark of some 
Australian ones (known as “wattles”) is used in 
tanning. The pods of a few African acacias (especi¬ 
ally that called “neb-neb”) are also rich in tannin, and 
the seeds of one species of South America are roasted 
and used as snuff. Other acacias are used in medicine, 
or (like the “black wood” of Australia) furnish valuable 
timber for furniture making. In desert regions 
shrubs of this genus furnish scanty pasture for goats > 
and camels. 

The acacias, of which there are about 450 species, belong 
to the family Leguminosae and the sub-family Mimosaceae. 
The name comes from the Greek akis, meaning “thorn.” The 
false acacia, or American locust, is Robinia psevdacacia; 
it belongs to a different section of the same family (see 
Locust Tree). 

ACADEMY, French. It is the day of the annual 
meeting of the French Academy, and the members 
file ceremoniously into their hall in Paris to occupy 
the arm-chairs, of the Forty Immortals. They are 
the greatest living masters of French literature, and 
election to their body is considered the highest honor 
that can be bestowed on a French writer. 

One of the chairs is vacant, for its occupant in the 
the past year has been removed by the hand of death. 
Presently one of the academicians arises and proposes 
a candidate. The works of the candidate are known 
to all; he has paid the obligatory visits to each of the 
members, and the necessary majority vote in his 
favor has been given. His sponsor wittily—sometimes 
rather sharply—characterizes him and his -work, and 
the candidate responds good-humoredly, praising 
especially the deceased member to whose seat he has 


been chosen. So the circle of the Immortals is once 
more made complete. 

The French Academy was first founded by Cardinal 
Richelieu in 1635, and it still serves as a supreme 
court in all matters relating to the French language 
and literary style. The award of one of its 23 prizes 
to a French literary work is the supreme recognition 
of excellence. With four similar organizations—those 
for Inscriptions, Science, Fine Arts, and Moral and 
Political Sciences—the Academy constitutes the 
Institute of France. 

Napoleon Bonaparte valued his membership in this 
organization so highly that he put after his name in 
his proclamations as General-in-Chief the words, 
“member of the Institute”—“so as to be sure to be 
understood,” said he, “even by the drummer boys.” 

The original “academy” was founded by the phi¬ 
losopher Plato in ancient Athens, and was so called 
from the name of the groVe A cademia where he was 
accustomed to walk and talk with his disciples. The 
word came to mean an association for promoting 
literature, philosophy, science, or art, and many such 
organizations flourished in Italy in the days of the 
Renaissance. The most famous academy today is 
the French Academy described above. But there is 
also a British Academy for the promotion of historical 
and philosophical studies; the Royal Academy (Brit¬ 
ish) for painting, sculpture, and architecture; the 
American Academy of arts and letters, with member¬ 
ship limited to fifty, etc. 

The word academy is also used in the United States, 
Canada, and Great Britain as a name for schools for boys 
and girls similar to high schools. Most of these academies 
were founded before the present system of high schools arose, 
and were often fostered by churches or religious societies. 

Acadia ( a-ca'di-a ). On Sept. 5, 1755, a group of 
some 400 men—French settlers in that district of the 
New World which we call Nova Scotia and which 
they named Acadie —were assembled in the church 
of Grand Pre, on an arm of the Bay of Fundy. 
Forty-two years before, France had ceded Acadia to 
Great Britain; but the inhabitants had clung to their 
French speech and sympathies, and in the recent 
“King George’s War” some of them had even taken 
up arms with their neighbors of French Canada. Now 
they were assembled to hear “his majesty’s in¬ 
tentions” with reference to them. 

Briefly those “intentions” included the deportation 
of the male Acadians who refused to take an uncon¬ 
ditional oath of allegiance to the British sovereign. 
Some 6,000—men, women, and children—were thus 
expelled and settled in the English colonies, from 
Massachusetts to Georgia. The story of Longfellow’s 
poem ‘Evangeline’ deals with the dispersal of these 
Acadians and the subsequent search of the maiden 
Evangeline for the lover from whom she had been 
separated on their marriage-day. 

Acadia was settled by the French in 1604, but the English 
claimed the region on the ground of John Cabot’s discovery 
in 1497. The French Acadians now form one-tenth of the 
population of Nova Scotia. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

4 








^The Art of Bookkeeping 


ACCOUNTS \ 


BOOKKEEPING Made EASY —Some SIMPLE METHODS 



A ccounts. Spend¬ 
ing money wisely 
is something more 
than opening your 
purse, and saving it is 
a more thoughtful 
thing than just keep¬ 
ing your purse closed. 

For thrift and saving, 
housekeeping, big 
business and little 
business, you must 
know where your 
money comes from 
and where it goes and 
what for, and know too that there is a balance—that 
more comes in than goes out. To really know this in 
an accurate way, you must keep accounts—must 
understand “bookkeeping,” to use an old word that to 
most people seems to mean something very complicated 
and hard. 


If a cash account 
is kept on opposite 
pages, the word Cash 
is written at the top 
of each page. On the 
left-hand page under 
the word Received, or 
under the abbrevia¬ 
tion Dr. (debit), are 
written ^the sums of 
money received as 
cash, or in the form 
of checks, drafts, 
money orders, etc. 
On the right-hand 
page under the word Paid, or under the abbreviation 
Cr. (credit), are written all sums of money paid out. 

Figure 1 is a month’s cash account kept by the 
treasurer of a school athletic association. 

If you add the sum of money on hand (called the 
balance on hand) to that paid out, the total for the two 


(Year) 

Received 



(Year) 

Paid 



Mar. 

1 

From sale of season tickets 

$22 

50 

Mar. 

2 

K. Ryder & Co. for printing 

$ 2 

20 


2 

From Mr. Whitney as gift 

5 

00 

• 

3 

Telephone charge 


30 

« 

15 

From proceeds of dance 

7 

20 

« 

16 

A. S. Spaulding for baseball 



« 

17 

Gate receipts of game 

12 

20 



and bats 

7 

40 





• 

* 

28 

B. & M. for transportation 

12 

00 








Balance on hand 

25 

00 



Total 

$46 

90 



Total 

$46 

90 


Fig. 1. Cash Account, School Athletic Association. 


But simple accounting is not difficult. The draw¬ 
ing of lines to inclose simple written entries of expenses 
and receipts is just an aid in the picture which every 
person—child or adult—should make of the things 
he does with his money. 

The simpler methods are so plain and helpful that 
they can be mastered with less difficulty than most 
children’s card games. Adding a second or third 
book or page to which the entries are made in a 
different form is simply adding another player, or 
rather an umpire, who keeps us playing the game 
correctly and decides doubtful points for us. Let us 
start the game of “Penny, penny, who’s got the 
penny?” jn its simplest form. 

The leading forms of accounts are (1) an account 
of money received and spent, called a cash account; 
(2) an account of indebtedness, where money is owed 
by one person or firm to another. 

How to Keep a Cash Account 

A cash account may be kept on the opposite pages 
of a book as shown above; or it may be kept on one 
page containing double columns (see page 6). 

contained in the Easy Reference 


columns in a cash account should be the same. If the 
totals are different there has been an item omitted, or 
some other mistake made. 

Writing in the totals in an account is called balanc¬ 
ing it. A cash account may be balanced daily or 
weekly, or at any other stated time. 

The Use of the Ledger 

In keeping an account of indebtedness, a book is 
used called a ledger. The name of the person owing 
money is written with his or her address on the lines 
above the account. At the left, on the debit side of 
the account, are written the items for which the 
person is in debt. At the right, on the credit side of 
the account, are written all sums of money he has 
paid and the value of goods or service for which he 
should receive credit. 

The account in Figure 4 shows that Mrs. George L. 
Parker, of 28 Winter Hill Avenue, during the month 
of November bought from the firm keeping the 
account goods costing her $29.00; and that she had 
returned silk for which she was credited $5.00, and 
that she had paid on the bill $24.00 in cash. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

































ACCOUNTS 



From a Dry Goods Ledger 


Figure 2 is the same account with the items all 
entered as they occurred on a single page containing 
one column labeled Dr. for cash received, and one 
column labeled Cr. for cash paid out. 


day booh , or the record is kept on sales slips. These 
items are transferred to a ledger in the form of a book, 
or to a set of ledger cards. 

For example, a man by the name of David Grant, 


(Year) 

• 1 

Dr. 

Cr. 

Mar. 

l 

Received from sale of season tickets 

$22 

50 



u 

2 

Received as gift from Mr. Whitney 

5 

00 



u 

2 

Paid R. Ryder & Co. for printing 



$ 2 

20 

u 

3 

Paid telephone charge 




30 

u 

15 

Received from proceeds of dance 

7 

20 



a 

16 

Paid A. S. Spaulding for baseball and bats 



7 

40 

u 

17 

Gate receipts from game 

12 

20 



* 

28 

B. & M. for transportation 



12 

00 



Balance on hand 



25 

00 




$46 

90 

$46 

90 


Fig. 2. Cash Account, School Athletic Association. 


Figure 3 shows a household account similar in 
form to that given first for the athletic association. 
The only difference is, that in place of the word 
received , the abbreviation Dr. is used, and in place 
of paid, Cr. Find the balance on hand. 


who keeps a country grocery where elaborate accounts 
are not necessary, would enter such transactions as 
the following in a day book: 

David Grant sells A. A. Evans, April 2, 1 bbl. St. Louis 
flour at $14.00, 3 lb. currants at 30c. 


Dr. 

CASH 



Cr. 

CASH 



(Year) 

(Year) 

Aug. 

1 

Balance brought forward 

$ 17 

50 

Aug. 

l 

August rent 

$30 

00 

U 

1 

Monthly allowance 

100 

00 

u 

l 

Henshaw dairy for milk 

5 

06 






‘u 

l 

Wordman for groceries 

31 

61 






u 

7 

Porters for meat 

20 

84 






u 

8 

N. E. Telephone Company 

1 

80 






u 

15 

R. C. Filmore for eggs 

3 

88 






u 

23 

Gas Company 

2 

88 






a 

28 

Electric Light Company 

3 

30 








Balance on hand 





Total 





Total 




Fig. 3. Household Cash Account; 

MRS. GEORGE L. PARKER 

28 Winter Hill Ave. 


Dr. 




Cr. 




Jan. 

1 

1 Blanket 

$ 9 

75 

Jan. 

9 

4 Yd. Silk @ 1.25 

$ 5 

00 

u 

8 

2 Pr. Gloves @ 1.50 

3 

00 

Feb. 

3 

Cash 

24 

00 

« 

8 

4 Yd. Silk @ 1.25 

5 

00 






« 

15 

1 Waist 

7 

75 






« 

18 

10 Yds. Lace @ .35 

3 

50 









$29 

00 




$29 

00 


Fig. 4. An Account of Indebtedness. 


The accounts kept by business men depend upon 
the nature of their business. If the business is buying 
and selling on a small scale, the transactions are 
usually first written, as they occur, in a book called a 


April 8, 2 lb. Rio coffee at 50c, 3 lb. Smyrna figs at 40c. 
April 20, David Grant pays on account $5.00. 

April 30, David Grant sells A. A. Evans 5 lb. Vermont 
butter at 62c, and A. A. Evans brings David Grant Yi. cord 
wood at $8.00 per cord. 


For any subject 


not found in its 


alphabetical place see information 





































































j Why “Double Entry”? 

He would then transfer these items to a ledger in 
the form shown in Figure 5. Find the balance due 
on this account. 

Double Entry Bookkeeping 
When the business is more complicated, such as that 
conducted by a big wholesale house or by a factory, 
the accounts are much more elaborate. All trans¬ 
actions are recorded in at least two accounts, so that 
they occur on the debit side of one account and on the 


ACETYLENE 

keeping systems for great.businesses, and the inspec¬ 
tion of books and preparation of special financial 
reports for their clients. The profession is one which 
pays well, but it requires a good head for figures, 
accuracy, and thorough training. A good high school 
education is a minimum basis for preparation. 
ACETYLENE ( a-set'y-len ). A great excursion steam-* 
er with its load of merrymakers has suddenly over¬ 
turned at its dock. The despairing cries of hundreds 



A. A. EVANS 


Dr. 




Cr. 




April 

2 

1 bbl. St. Louis flour 

$14 

00 

April 

20 

Cash 

$5 

00 



3 lb. currants @ .30 


90 

« 

30 

Yt cord wood @ 8.00 

4 

00 

* 

8 

2 lb. Rio coffee @ .50 

1 

00 








3 lb. Smyrna figs @ .40 

1 

20 







30 

5 lb. Vermont butter @ .62 

3 

10 

May 

1 

Balance 














Fig. 5. A Ledger Account. 



Mon. 

Tues. 

Wed. 

Thurs. 

Fri. 

Sat. 

Hours 

Wages 

per 

hour 

Over¬ 

time 

Amount 

James Richards 

8 

7 X 

7V2 

8 

8 

4 


$1.25 

1 


Fred Hall 

7 Z A 

8 

7H 

7H 

8 

3 X 


1.15 



William Holmes 

8 

8 

8 

8 

8 

4 


1.15 

1M 


George Smith 

8 

8 

7H 

8 

7 H 



1.00 



Arthur Dodge 

7H 

7 

8 

8 

7Y 

4 


.90 



William Jackson 

8 

7 

7Y 

7 H 

7% 

4 


.90 



John Woods 

8 

7 y 2 

8 

8 

8 

3 X 


.75 



Total 












Fig. 6. Carpenter’s Time Sheet. 


credit side of another. Such a system of keeping 
accounts or books is called double entry in distinction 
from single entry, where each item occurs on only 
one side of an account. This more elaborate form in 
bookkeeping enables a business house to check up 
the work more carefully. 

A common record kept by a business man employ¬ 
ing labor is the time sheet, such as the carpenter’s 
time sheet shown below. From this record pay-rolls 
are made out. Find the missing items in the time 
sheet in Figure 6 which it is necessary to know before 
making out the pay-roll. Reckon the wages for over¬ 
time as one and a half times regular pay. 

The Profession of Accountant 

Just as a mechanical engineer represents a higher 
stage than a mechanic, so an expert accountant is 
more highly trained than a bookkeeper. Accountancy 
today has become a profession and courses in it are 
given in the universities. In many states examina¬ 
tions are given for those who wish to attain the title 
of C. P. A. (certified public accountant). 

The work of such men includes the public audit 
of books required by law, the organization of book- 


imprisoned within the steel hull mingle with the 
shrieks of the drowning. How can the survivors be 
rescued? Long before the riveted steel plates of the 
hull can be cut through with drills or cold chisels, all 
these men, women, and children will have been suffo¬ 
cated or drowned. 

Suddenly nearby workmen appear rapidly bringing 
an oxyacetylene torch and the necessary steel con¬ 
tainers. They turn a fine jet of brilliant greenish 
flame on the steel hull, amid a shower of sparks. 
Under the intense heat (3500° F. or more) the 
steel melts like wax. With the rapidity of shears 
cutting through pasteboard, the oxyacetylene flame 
cuts a great opening in the steel hull, through which 
the prisoners climb to safety. 

Of equal importance with the use of the oxyacety¬ 
lene torch for cutting steel plates and bars and wreck¬ 
ing steel structures is its use in welding metals. 
Street-car rails by means of it can be fused and welded 
into a single piece where they lie, so intense is the 
heat. It is also used for a thousand purposes in the 
manufacture or repair of machinery and other metal 
manufactures. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

7 























































\ ACETYLENE 



ACIDS AND ALKALIES] 



The oxyacetylene torch is only one of the many 
applications of this wonderful gas, acetylene. All 
over the world in the channels of navigation are 
thousands of acetylene-lighted buoys, marking the 

course for ships, 

CUTTING STEEL BEAMS WITH A anf l manv of 
BREATH OF FLAME ana man ^ 

these are pro¬ 
vided with ap¬ 
paratus for 
manufacturing 
their gas auto¬ 
matically for 15 
months with¬ 
out attention. 
There are 360 
such buoys 
marking the 
channel of the 
Panama Canal 
alone. Also, in 
hundreds of 
mines in the 
United States, 
miners are 
lighted at their 
work by acety¬ 
lene lamps fix¬ 
ed to their caps, 
which give more than 20 times as much light as the 
old oil lamps formerly used. Thousands of homes and 
public buildings, especially in the rural districts of 
this country, are lighted by acetylene, and it is gen¬ 
erally used for bicycle and motorboat headlights, 
and until recently for automobile lights as well. 


This illustration shows a workman cutting 
a steel beam in two by the use of acetylene and 
oxygen. The two gases are sent through the 
blowpipe which he holds in his hand. In order 
to protect his eyes from the intense light and 
flying sparks, he wears big goggles. 


Acetylene (C 2 H 2 ) is usually made by the action of water 
on calcium carbide. This is a hard grayish slaglike mass 
(Ca C 2 ), which is prepared by fusing lime and hard coal in 
the electric furnace. The manufacture of calcium carbide is 
largely carried on at Niagara Falls, on account of the cheap 
electric current there. The gas becomes liquid under high 
pressures, but is then highly explosive. It is usually trans¬ 
ported, therefore, by dissolving it in a colorless liquid known 
as acetone, which absorbs 25 times its own volume of acety¬ 
lene at atmospheric pressure, and proportionately more at 
higher pressures. Cylinders containing “dissolved acety¬ 
lene,” as it is called, are now obtainable almost anywhere in 
the United States. 


ACHILLES (d-kll'ez). Of all the Greeks who fought 
in the war about Troy, the bravest was Achilles, 
son of the king of the Myrmidons. His mother, the 
sea-goddess Thetis, was warned that her son was 
doomed to an early death, and had sought to ward off 
this fate by dipping him as a babe in the dark waters 
of the River Styx, which flows through the underworld, 
so that no weapon could wound him. The centaur 
Chiron taught him the art of war, as well as music 
and medicine. To prevent him from going to the 
Trojan War, his goddess mother dressed him as a 
girl and hid him among the maidens at the court of 
the king of Scyros (sl'ros). 

Thither came Odysseus (Ulysses), the wisest of 
the Greeks, disguised as a peddler. When he had 


spread his wares before the laughing chattering 
girls, he suddenly sounded an alarm of war. The 
frightened girls ran screaming away, but the dis¬ 
guised Achilles betrayed himself by seizing a sword 
and spear from the peddler’s stock. So, yielding to 
his destiny, the young hero joined his countrymen 
in the great conflict. 

Achilles went to war with 50 ships and became 
renowned as the greatest warrior of all the Greek 
hosts. During the first nine years of the struggle he 
sacked 23 cities around Troy. Then he quarreled with 
Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, over a maid 
Briseis, whom he loved. When she was taken from 
him, he sulked in his tent, refusing to fight, and the 
Greeks were hard pressed. At last his friend Patro- 
clus, wearing the armbr of Achilles, drove the enemy 
before him, but was himself slain by Hector, the 
leader of the Trojans. Enraged at the death of his 
friend, Achilles went forth again to battle, equipped 
with new armor which his goddess mother prevailed 
upon Hephaestus, the god of metal working, to make. 
Achilles drove the Trojans within their mighty walls 
and in single combat killed Hector, whom he dragged 
three times around the walls at the tail of his chariot. 

Here ends the account in the ‘Iliad’, which deals 
only with “the wrath of Achilles”; but the story is 
taken up by other writers. These tell how Achilles 
was slain some time later while driving the Trojans 
back to the city gates. The god Apollo, it is said, 
angered by the death of Hector, guided the arrow to 
the one part of Achilles’ body that was vulnerable— 
the tendon of the heel, by which his mother had held 
him when, she dipped him into the River Styx. Thus 
it is that this part of our bodies is still called “the 
tendon of Achilles.” 

ACIDS and alkalies. Like human beings, the 
chemical elements of which the world and everything 
in it are composed can do things in combination which 
they cannot do separately. Indeed the nature of a 
chemical compound is often entirely different from 
that of any of the elements which enter into it. 
Thus, the flame-sustaining oxygen enters into partner¬ 
ship with the inflammable gas hydrogen and becomes 
the fire-extinguishing liquid, water. In the same 
way the highly poisonous gas chlorine combines with 
the metal sodium, to form an important ingredient 
of human food—common salt. So fond of team work 
are most elements that we meet them more frequently 
in compounds than free; some, in fact, are never found 
in nature uncombined. (See Chemistry.) 

Among the thousands and thousands of chemical 
partnerships or compounds, there are three kinds of 
special importance. These are acids, bases, and salts 
(see Salt). They either enter into or have played a 
part in the production of almost everything that we 
eat, wear, touch, or use. 

Acids and bases are chemically the opposites of 
each other. Hydrogen is always one of the partners 
(Continued on page 10) 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 







HEN the grievous tidings were 
borne to Achilles, that Patroclus, 
clad in Achilles’ armor, was slain, 
he poured dust over his head and 
tore his hair in anguish. His mother Thetis, 
the sea-goddess, heard from afar her son’s 
lamentation and sped to his side. 

“My child, why weepest thou? What 
sorrow hath come to thy heart?” 

Achilles made answer: “My dear comrade 
is dead; Patroclus, whom I honored above 
all others as though he were my very self. 
My soul biddeth me also live no longer if 
Hector be not smitten by my spear and yield 
his life for the slaughter of Patroclus.” 

After mingling her tears with her son’s, 
Thetis, the silver-footed goddess, sped straight 
to Olympus, the abode of the gods, to the forge 
of Hephaestus. In his youth she had befriend¬ 
ed the lame god and now he was eager to help 
her. She told him of her son’s trouble, and 
asked Hephaestus to make for Achilles, new 
armor such as never yet was borne by man. 

The divine smith set to work and made a 
breastplate, and a great helmet ridged with 
gold, and also greaves to protect the hero’s 
thighs. Most wonderful of all was the shield, 
whereon Hephaestus wrought great wonders 
of metal in bronze, gold, tin, and silver wire. 
There he fashioned cunningly the sea, the 



earth, the sky and all its stars, the sun, and 
the moon. There were images of two cities, 
one at peace and one at war. In the peaceful 
city was a wedding and happy girls were 
singing. In the city at war were men defend¬ 
ing it, who stood on its walls, while by a stream 
hid warriors, to spring on the cattle and herds¬ 
men of their enemies as they came to drink. 

In another part of the shield was pictured a 
field with plowmen at work, while in still 
another the harvest was being reaped. He also 
pictured a vineyard with men and maidens 
going down a path carrying baskets of grapes 
upon their heads, while in their midst a boy 
played upon a golden harp, singing pleasantly. 
Hephaestus also represented a dance of maids 
and men, most delicately wrought. From the 
silver belts of the men hung daggers of gold, 
and fair wreaths crowned the heads of the 
maids. Encircling the whole shield was an 
ocean that flowed around it like a great river. 

Thetis received gladly these god-made arms 
that no mortal could pierce, and brought and 
laid them at the feet of her son. 

Terrible as a god, his glittering armor 
blinding the eyes of the Trojans, his stature 
and strength filling their hearts with fear and 
trembling, Achilles led forth his men to battle, 
to take vengeance for the death of Patroclus. 
—Retold from Homer's l lliad’, Book xviii. 




contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

9 































ACROPOLIS 


|acids and alkalies i feiJBHStjl 

that unite to make an acid, and when an acid is 
brought into contact with a base it reorganizes to 
form a new partnership called a salt, exchanging its 
hydrogen for the metal of the base. A base is a 
compound of a metal or a metallic group of elements 
with oxygen and hydrogen. When the metal of a 
base takes the place of the hydrogen of an acid, this 
displaced hydrogen unites with the oxygen and hydro¬ 
gen of the base to form water. 

Many acids have the sharp sour taste which we 
call acid. Many of them also turn certain vegetable 
substances red, including one known as litmus, which 
is used to make a test paper called litmus paper (see 
Litmus). 

Hydrochloric acid is a partnership of chlorine and 
hydrogen; sulphuric acid, of sulphur, hydrogen, 
and oxygen; nitric acid, of nitrogen, hydrogen, and 
oxygen. Vinegar is sour because it contains acetic 
acid; grapes contain tartaric acid; oranges and lemons, 
citric acid; and apples, malic acid. 

Of all the bases (so called because they are regarded 
as furnishing the stable end of the salt partnership), 
the most important are the group known as alkalies. 
Alkali is an Arabic word meaning “ ashes.” The most 
characteristic alkalies are caustic soda or sodium 
hydroxide, and caustic potash or potassium hydroxide, 
which were first made from ashes. Alkalies have a 
bitter soapy taste and turn litmus paper blue. 

How to Make Chemicals Talk 

Bring the alkali caustic soda (which is a partnership 
between sodium, hydrogen, and oxygen) into contact 
with hydrochloric acid, and the old partnerships will 
be dissolved and two new ones formed, namely, 
sodium chloride, or common table salt, and water. 
Do you want to know how the new partnerships stand 
as acids or alkalies? Ask them; you can always ask 
a chemical substance what it is if you know how. 
Get a strip of litmus paper and put a drop of the 
liquid on it. Vinegar, besides tasting sour, will vote 
red on the litmus ballot, thus declaring, “I contain 
an acid.” Limewater, besides tasting soapy and 
bitter, will vote blue, proclaiming, “I am alkaline.” 
Sodium chloride or common salt solution will not 
change the color of either red or blue litmus paper, 
thus announcing itself as neutral. There are salts, 
however, in which the acid or alkaline end of the 
partnership predominates and many of these will 
show their preferences by their reaction to litmus. 

Just because of their readiness to break up and 
become something else, acids and alkalies are of almost 
incalculable importance. They enter into our bodily 
processes; for instance, our blood is alkaline and our 
gastric juices acid, and any disturbance in the normal 
alkalinity or acidity of either affects our health. 

Acids and Alkalies as “Engineers” and “Explorers” 

This adventurous activity of acids and alkalies, 
moreover, makes them the engineers and explorers, 
so to speak, of our industrial processes. The paper 
on which this book is printed was made from wood 
pulp by the aid of sulphuric acid and caustic soda; 


the pictures which illustrate it were printed from 
metal plates etched with nitric and hydrochloric acids. 
Architects make their blue-prints on paper which 
is treated with a salt of ferricyanic acid. Silica com¬ 
bines with lime and the alkali salts, potash and soda, 
to make glass; table glassware is etched with hydro¬ 
fluoric acid. Soap is produced by the reaction 
between an alkali and a fatty acid. Baking powder 
“raises” dough because the reaction between its acid 
and its alkaline ingredients liberates the gas carbon 
dioxide. Acetic acid is used in the production of 
printed fabrics; boric acid and other acids in medi¬ 
cine. Soda enters into the tanning of leathers and 
the manufacture of dyes, washing powders, and 
bleaches. And these are only a few of the thousands 
of roles that acids and alkalies play in our lives. 

The alkali salts, potash and soda, are pioneers in a 
double sense, for the shortage of the former about 
150 years ago and the effort to manufacture the 
latter as a substitute largely started the activity 
which has resulted in the vast chemical industries of 
today. Potash salts were originally obtained by boil¬ 
ing the ashes of land plants in a pot, hence the name. 
In the 18th century the destruction of forests had 
limited the supply of potash salts and threatened the 
already important industries of dyeing and soap- and 
glass-making. It was known even then that soda 
could be used as a substitute for potash in some 
cases, but the only source of soda salts then known 
was the ashes of sea plants, and the supply was very 
limited. The Paris Academy therefore offered in 1775 
a large money prize for a method of producing soda 
from common salt. The problem was solved and, 
directly or indirectly, the soda-manufacturing indus¬ 
try and the knowledge gained in it have been respon¬ 
sible for a large share of the achievement of modern 
industrial chemistry. 

Certain substances share alkaline properties, although 
they are not strictly alkalies. Among these are the alka¬ 
loids, organic (vegetable) substances which may unite with 
acids to form salts. Some of the alkaloids, though highly 
poisonous, have valuable medicinal properties. Among the 
most important alkaloids are caffeine, found in coffee and 
tea; nicotine, in tobacco; morphine, in opium (which comes 
from poppy juice); quinine, in Peruvian bark; cocaine, in 
coca leaves; atropine, in deadly nightshade, etc. 

Calcium, magnesium, and certain other substances are 
called alkaline earth metals, because some of their compounds 
have some alkaline properties. 

ACONCAGUA ( a-kon-ka'gwa ). The loftiest moun¬ 
tain in South America, according to most authorities, 
is the extinct volcano of this name in the southern 
Andes, on the boundary line between Argentine and 
Chile. Its height is 22,860 feet, or over 2,500 feet 
higher than Mt. McKinley, the highest summit in 
North America. There is also a river and province 
of this same name in Chile. 

Acrop olis. Just as Athens is the center of 
interest in ancient Greece, so the Acropolis interests 
us most in Athens. In the long long ago the whole of 
Athens was confined to this single hill whose top the 
early inhabitants leveled and fortified against armies 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

10 






The Heart of Athens 


ACROPOLIS 



from the surrounding plain. The Acropolis was 
defended by the Athenians for the last time in the 
second Persian War, when certain citizens fortified 
it with stakes and beams. The oracle at Delphi had 
promised safety in a “wooden wall” and not everyone 
believed with Themistocles that this oracle pointed to 
abandonment of the city to the intruder and reliance 
upon the “wooden wall” of the Athenian fleet. Some 
of the old statues, blackened by fire, remained after 
the retreat of the Persians, and Athena’s sacred olive 
sprang up again from the roots. 


The ascent to the Acropolis is made from the Agora 
or old-time market place. You go up a series of steps 
and through the Propylaea or gateway. This has a 
picture gallery on one side and a little temple of the 
Wingless Victory on the other. After going through 
the gateway you come out upon a marble terrace 
where the little Athenian girls used to dance dressed 
up like bears in honor of the goddess Artemis. 
Beyond that is the precinct where Phidias’ great 
bronze statue of Athena stood. To the right is the 
Parthenon, and to the left the Erechtheum. 


THE GLORIOUS ACROPOLIS IN THE DAYS OF PERICLES 


! 



This picture shows how the Acropolis looked in the time of Pericles. The temple and treasure house of Athena, the Parthenon, stands on 
the top of the hill at the right. It was not only the most beautiful temple in all Greece, but even in ruins, as it stands today, it is the world’s 
most famous piece of architecture. It was approached by the winding road which you see in the foreground. The building in the center of 
the picture, with its six rows of pillars, is the Propylaea. Through this gateway the people passed to reach the temples. On the left of 
the Propylaea is the great statue of Athena. It was made of the swords and shields taken from the Persians at Marathon and was so tall 
that it could be seen by the Greek sailors far out at sea. Inside the Parthenon was another colossal statue of Athena, all of gold and ivory. 


When the Acropolis was no longer needed as a 
fortification, Pericles made it a shrine of Athena, 
the patron goddess of Athens. The great sculptor 
Phidias planned the new Acropolis and made the 
principal statues, and the most famous sculptors, 
artists, and builders all had their part in making it 
beautiful. The hill rose several hundred feet above 
the surrounding plain, and when Phidias set his 
36-foot bronze statue of Athena upon its top, sailors 
could see the shining crest of her helmet and tip of 
her spear as soon as they rounded the point of 
Sunium, some 15 miles away. Her treasure-house, 
the Parthenon ,—so called from the Greek word for 
maiden, since Athena was preeminently the maiden 
goddess—was the most beautiful temple in all Greece. 
Erechtheus, one of the mythical kings of Athens, 
shared the honors with Athena, and his temple, 
the Erechtheum, was also very beautiful. Its famous 
little “porch of the maidens” still looks very much as 
it used to, although one of the supporting maidens has 
been carried to London and its place taken by a cast. 

contained in the Easy Reference 


Of all the buildings which the genius of man has 
produced, the Parthenon was the most nearly perfect. 
It was built of Pentelic marble, with Doric columns 
all around it, the most beautifully proportioned that 
have ever been hewn. It was 228 feet long, 101 feet 
broad, and 65 feet high. 

There were three sets of surpassingly beautiful 
sculptures. First there was the sculpture of the two 
“pediments” or triangular gables at the ends of the 
building. The eastern pediment represented the birth 
of Athena, the western or back pediment the struggle 
between Athena and Poseidon for the guardianship of 
Athens. Then there were the “metopes” (squares 
which in a wooden temple would be the ends of beams), 
92 in all, and these were carved in relief each with 
some separate mythical hand-to-hand struggle—gods 
against giants, Lapithae against Centaurs, Greeks 
against Amazons, Greeks against Trojans, and so 
forth. The third set of sculpture was the “frieze” 
around the top of the cella or chamber wall inside 
the colonnade. This represented the Panathenaic 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 
11 


















ACROPOLIS 


ADAM S, JOHN 



procession which took place every year for the cere¬ 
monial purpose of giving Athena a new saffron gown. 
The frieze was 39 feet above you, and as you caught 
glimpses of it between the pillars it seemed to be 
slowly advancing. 

In the shrine beyond the cella was the famous ivory- 
and-gold statue of Athena Parthenos,. which reached 
to the ceiling and had $750,000 worth of refined gold 
upon the raiment. This statue was the work of 
Phidias and was very beautiful as well as costly. 
Everything about the temple was most exquisitely 
proportioned, so the architects today still study its 
ruins with loving professional interest. 

When the Greek traveler Pausanias visited the 
Acropolis in the 2d century a.d. —seven centuries 
after Pericles—it was filled with statues and monu¬ 
ments, some old, some of them as late as the Roman 
emperor Hadrian. Now there is little left except the 
architecture. The sculpture suffered terribly by 
theft and otherwise in the Middle Ages. The greatest 
damage to the building came in 1685, when the Turks 
used the Parthenon as a powder magazine, and it 
exploded. Many of the sculptured marbles that sur¬ 
vive to our own day were taken to London for safe¬ 
keeping in 1825. 

Many another ancient city besides Athens had its Acropo¬ 
lis, for the word means the highest part or citadel of a city. 
In fact some writers say that it was the presence of these 
flat topped hills in the Greek plains that made the develop¬ 
ment there of a high civilization possible at so early a date. 

Adams, Charles Francis (1807-1886). “None of 
our generals in the field, not Grant himself, did us 
better or more trying service than Charles Francis 
Adams in his forlorn outpost in London.” 

These words of James Russell Lowell, himself at a 
later date a distinguished occupant of the same post, 
embody the sober judgment of history on the Ameri¬ 
can minister to Great Britain in the trying days of 
the Civil War. Patriotism, high ideals of public 
service, sturdy independence of character, and sound 
intelligence were parts of Adams’ puritan inheritance; 
for he was a member of that famous Massachusetts 
family which for more than three generations played 
a leading part in American history. 

The son of John Quincy Adams and grandson of 
John Adams, he was born in Boston, graduated from 
Harvard College (in 1825), and studied law under 
Daniel Webster. He was for five years a member of 
the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1848 was the 
Free Soil candidate for vice-president. When the 
Republican party was formed ten years later, he 
joined it and was elected to Congress. President 
Lincoln then appointed him minister to England, a 
position which he filled with such great ability from 
1861 to 1868. 

Mr. Adams found the great body of upper-class 
Englishmen hostile or indifferent to the Federal 
government in its struggle with the South. The 
British government had early granted equal rights 
as a “belligerent” to the Confederacy, and the Prime 
Minister and Foreign Secretary only awaited a 


favorable occasion to recognize its independence. 
Our blockade of the Southern ports forced the 
Lancashire cotton mills to shut down for lack of raw 
material, and the mill owners demanded loudly that 
Great Britain raise the blockade. The most difficult 
question of all arose from the laxity of the British 
government in permitting the famous Alabama 
cruiser, built for the Confederacy in England, to 
escape to the high seas and begin its career of 
destruction. 

Probably no diplomatic representative of any 
country ever had more difficult questions than these 
to handle. It must be remembered also that this was 
in the days before submarine cables and wireless, and 
the minister was forced to act largely on his own 
judgment. But Mr. Adams showed ability and tact 
of a high order in asserting our rights, and the place 
which he thus won for himself is second only to that 
of Franklin in the history of American diplomacy. 

Mr. Adams’ last public service was as a member 
of the Geneva arbitration tribunal (1871-72), which 
fixed the amount of damages Great Britain paid for 
permitting the Alabama to escape. 

Henry Adams (1838-1918), whose brilliant book entitled 
‘The Education of Henry Adams’ was published in 1918, 
was a distinguished son of Charles Francis Adams. He was 
at one time professor of history in Harvard University and 
was the author of numerous historical works, including a 
notable ‘History of the United States from 1801 to 1817’ 
(9 vols.). His brother, Charles Francis Jr. (1835-1915),was 
also eminent as a soldier in the Civil War, railroad president, 
and historian. Brooks Adams (1848- ) has written on 

economic and social topics. 

ADAMS, John (1735-1826). At a time when Ameri¬ 
can patriots had as yet scarcely learned to utter the 
word “independence,” strong-headed and stout¬ 
hearted John Adams, as delegate from Massachusetts 
to the Continental Congress, was urging separation 
from the mother country, and doing it so boldly as to 
cause him to be shunned by his fellow delegates in 
the streets of Philadelphia. 

He was the first member of this notable family to 
rise to fame. Born in what is now the town of 
Quincy, Mass., he was graduated from Harvard 
College in 1755 and three years later began to practice 
law. After a few years he married Abigail Smith, a 
neighboring minister’s daughter. His intimate letters 
to her and hers to him during the period which 
followed throw a flood of light on many Revolutionary 
events. 

Foremost Champion of Independence 

One of the most courageous things John Adams 
ever did was to undertake, in a time of great patriotic 
excitement, the defense of the British soldiers on trial 
for murder as a result of the so-called “Boston 
Massacre” (1770). Not merely did he procure the 
acquittal of all but two of them, but he so impressed 
his fellow townsmen of Boston with his courage, 
honesty, and patriotism that they forthwith elected 
him to the colonial legislature. 

From the beginning of the struggle with the mother 
country, Adams was one of the staunchest upholders 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place s e e i n f o r m a ti o n 

12 






f Champion of Independence 


of the rights of the colonies, both in his speeches 
and in writing for the press. He opposed the Stamp 
Act and was a member of the Massachusetts dele¬ 
gation to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1778. 
When at last the members of the assembly were con¬ 
verted by events to his way of thinking as to separa¬ 
tion, it fell to his lot to second, on June 7, 1776, the 


ADAMS, JOHN | 

Britain, a post which he held until his return to 
become the first vice-president of the United States. 
Succeeds Washington as President 
When political parties sprang up in Washington’s 
administration, Adams and Alexander Hamilton be¬ 
came the recognized leaders of the Federalist party, 
in opposition to Jefferson and the Democratic- 


AMERICA’S MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILY 



■■ 


Here are five most distinguished mem¬ 
bers of the famous Adams family,— 
John Adams; Abigail Adams his wife, to 
whose wise counsel he attributed his 
success; John Quincy Adams, their son; 
Charles Francis Adams, their grandson; 
and Samuel Adams, the organizer of the 
“Tea Party,” who was a second cousin of 
John Adams. 




JOHN ADAMS 

famous resolution of Richard 
Henry Lee, that" these colonies 
are, and of right ought to be, 
free and independent states.” 

John Adams was made a 
member, with Jefferson, of the 
committee ap¬ 
pointed to draw 
up the Declaration 
of Independence, 
and in the debates 
which followed its 
introduction into 
the congress, he 
was its foremost 
champion. In this 
and other pro¬ 
ceedings he gained 
the reputation of 
having the “clear¬ 
est head and firm¬ 
est heart of any 
man in Congress.” 

In 1778 Adams 
sailed for France, 
which had just signed a treaty of alliance with the re¬ 
volted colonies, to take his place as one of the com¬ 
missioners to that country. There he rendered new 
services to the American cause as notable as those 
rendered while in Congress. With John Jay and Benj¬ 
amin Franklin, he concluded the preliminary treaty 
with Great Britain, in 1782, which recognized the in¬ 
dependence of the United States and ended hostilities. 
He then became the first American minister to Great 


ABIGAIL ADAMS 


JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 
Republican party. Adams 
succeeded Washington as presi¬ 
dent in 1797, but owing to 
political mismanagement Jef¬ 
ferson was chosen vice-presi¬ 
dent with him. 

In spite of 
Adams’ great abil¬ 
ity, patriotism, 
and integrity of 
character, he was 
never really popu¬ 
lar, even with the 
Federalists. He 
was blunt, vain, 
and tactless, and 
the Jeffersonian 
Republicans 
charged him with 
wishing to confine 
power to “the 
rich, the well-born, 
and the able.” He 
did not get along 
well with Alexan¬ 
der Hamilton, the ablest leader of the Federalists, 
and as a result the party was hopelessly split during 
the whole of Adams’ administration. Party passions 
grew ever higher, and there was increasing friction 
also with the rulers of Revolutionary France. As a 
result, the four years of Adams’ presidency were one 
of the stormiest periods of our history. 

For a moment only were factions stilled. This was 
in 1798, when the insolent demand of the French 


SAMUEL ADAMS 

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

13 












ADAMS, JOHN QUINCy] 


[ADAMS, JOHN 

Directors for money bribes led our envoy Charles 
C. Pinckney to use his famous phrase, “Millions for 
defense, but not one cent for tribute” (see X Y Z Affair). 
For a brief time war with France actually existed on 
the sea, and military preparations were energetically 
pushed. President Adams won great applause by his 
declaration, “I will never send another minister to 
France without assurance that he will be received, 
respected, and honored as be¬ 
comes the representative of a 
great, free, powerful, and inde¬ 
pendent nation.” 

Friendly relations with 
France were soon restored, but 
the war taxations led to new 
complications at home. There 
was rioting in Pennsylvania, 
known as “Fries’ Rebellion”; 
and the Federalists who were 
in power used the opportunity 
to press tyrannical laws known 
as the “Alien and Sedition 
laws.” President Adams took 
no part in securing these stat¬ 
utes, but he shared in the un¬ 
popularity which they excited. 

One Vermont editor, for ex¬ 
ample, was fined $1,000 and 
imprisoned four months for saying that Adams 
possessed “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp and 
for foolish adulation.” The Virginia and Kentucky 
legislatures passed resolutions asking the other states 
to unite with them in declaring the objectionable laws 
“null and void.” These resolutions proved important 
in giving rise to doctrines of “ nullification” and “seces¬ 
sion” which were later used by the South in the slavery 
controversy. 

Defeated for Re-election 

These Alien and Sedition laws were the result of the 
Federalists’ distrust of the masses of the people. They 
contributed largely to the defeat of their party in the 
elections of 1800, as a result of which Adams and 
Pinckney received only 65 and 64 electoral votes, to 
73 given for Jefferson and Burr, the Republican can¬ 
didates. One of President Adams’ last official acts 
was the appointment of John Marshall of Virginia 
as chief justice of the supreme court. 

His failure of re-election was a bitter disappoint¬ 
ment to Adams. He retired at the end of his single 
term to pass the last 25 years of his existence in 
private life. He refused petulantly to stay to see 
his successor inaugurated, and left for Massachusetts 
before daybreak on the morning of March 4, 1801. 
In spite of such childishness his fame has grown with 
the passing years, until now this second president of 
the United States appears as no unworthy figure in 
heroic times. John Adams died on July 4, 1826, 
on the 50th anniversary of the independence of the 
United States. Jefferson, with whom Adams had 
long been reconciled, died the same day; but Adams, 


not knowing this, murmured as he died: “Thomas 
Jefferson still lives.” 

Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848). In a public 
address Mr. Adams once quoted some words from the 
Latin author Tacitus, which a lady in his. audience 
translated as meaning “Equal to, not above duty.” 
She added that a better translation would be the 
three words, John Quincy Adams. 

Duty was the keynote of the 
younger Adams’ whole life. 
We see it in the boy when at 
10 years of age he wrote to his 
father: “I make but a poor 
figure at composition. My 
head is much too fickle, my 
thoughts are running after 
birds’ eggs, play, and trifles till 
I get vexed with myself.” 

We see it again in the young 
man who turned his back on 
life at the court of St. James, in 
England—to which his father 
had just been appointed the 
first minister from the United 
States—and returned to Amer¬ 
ica in order that he might obtain 
a degree at Harvard College; 
although he felt, “were I now 
to go with my father, probably my immediate satis¬ 
faction might be greater than it will be in returning to 
America.” 

A Diplomat at Fifteen 

At that time (1785) he had enjoyed life abroad for 
seven years. He was born at the old Adams home in 
Quincy, Mass. When 10 years old he had accom¬ 
panied his father to Paris, where the elder Adams was 
American representative during the Revolutionary 
War, and for some time he was in school in Paris and 
Holland. At 15 he accompanied Francis Dana to 
Russia as private secretary, when that gentleman 
received the appointment—not recognized by Russia 
—as envoy to the court at St. Petersburg. We cannot 
wonder that he found the prospect of giving up this 
diplomatic life “somewhat discouraging for a youth 
of my ambition.” 

In his case sacrifice brought its reward, for, after 
having graduated from Harvard in 1788 and been 
admitted to the bar three years later, he was appoint¬ 
ed by President Washington as minister at the 
Hague (Holland), when he was barely 27 years old. 
When John Adams became president the question of 
his son’s diplomatic future became an embarrassing 
one, for both father and son possessed an old-fashioned 
puritanical sense of duty, and President Adams did 
not wish to be accused of favoritism. But Wash¬ 
ington came to the rescue, and in a letter to President 
Adams urged that John Quincy Adams should be 
promoted to the place of minister at Berlin, because 
(as he said) “young Adams was the ablest person in 
the American diplomatic service.” 


JOHN ADAMS’ ADMINIS¬ 
TRATION (1797-1801) 

X Y Z Affair and Naval War 
with France (1799). 

Alien and Sedition Laws against 
French Partisans. 
Kentucky and Virginia 
Nullification Resolutions. 
Death of Washington (1799). 
Capital Removed from New York 
to Washington (1800). 
Federalist Party Split. 
Adams Defeated for Re-election. 
John Marshall made Chief Justice 
of Supreme Court (1801-1835). 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

14 
















Not Popular at Home 


36j] ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 


This unquestioned ability and the fact that people 
knew he would always do his duty were the char¬ 
acteristics to which John Quincy Adams owed his 
long political career. Besides the diplomatic positions 
already mentioned, he served as minister to Russia, 
as United States senator and representative from 
Massachusetts, as secretary of state, and as president. 
And he held all of these positions in spite of the fact 
that personally he was one of 
the most unpopular men in the 
country—largely owing to his 
habit of always doing his duty 
and saying just what he 
thought. 

Lack of Popularity at Home 

His unpopularity was first 
shown when he was in the 
Senate during Jefferson’s ad¬ 
ministration. Part of the hos¬ 
tility which he encountered 
was due to the anger which all 
Jeffersonian Republicans—and 
many Federalists—felt for his 
father, and part was due to his 
own ungracious manner; but 
most arose from the fact that, 
although he was a New Eng¬ 
lander, he supported Jeffer¬ 
son’s embargo policy and the Louisiana Purchase. 
On this account the Federalists turned against him and 
bitterly reviled him for deserting his party; and so he 
was opposed by both Federalists and Republicans at 
the same time. Any measure which he proposed was 
sure to be defeated. He was forced to get other 
senators to introduce his bills, because, as he remark¬ 
ed, “I knew that if I moved it, a spirit of jealousy 
would immediately be raised against doing anything.” 

He expected that his support of the embargo policy 
would end his political career—a most unpleasant 
prospect for him, for Adams was fond of political life. 
His expectations were agreeably disappointed, how¬ 
ever, for the Democratic-Republican party took him 
up; and when President Monroe, in 1817, appointed 
him secretary of state, he seemed to be in line for 
the presidency, for both Madison and Monroe had 
stepped from the one office into the other. 

Adams wished to obtain the presidency, not only for 
the honor of the office itself, but also because he felt 
that he was well fitted for it. Nevertheless, in 1824 
he proudly refused to do anything to promote his 
election. It was a grievous disappointment to him 
that the election went to the House of Representatives 
owing to the fact that no one of the four candidates 
—Jackson, Adams, Crawford, and Clay—had se¬ 
cured a majority of the electors chosen by the people. 
Even then Adams made no effort to advance his own 
interests. 

Elected President over Jackson 

As Clay was not a candidate before the House 
(having been fourth on the list), his friends supported 


Adams. This gave Adams the election, which very 
much angered the friends of General Jackson, who 
had received the largest number (though not a 
majority) of the electoral votes. When Adams 
appointed Clay to be secretary of state, Jackson’s 
followers immediately brought a charge of “corrupt 
bargain,” falsely declaring that Adams had promised 
Clay the position for his aid in the election. 

The quarrels between the 
“Jackson men” (who became 
known as Democrats) and the 
“Adams men” (who became 
Whigs) were the most signifi¬ 
cant events of Adams’ admin¬ 
istration. The Democrats were 
strong enough in Congress to 
defeat any bill which Adams 
wished passed. For instance, 
in 1826 the President named 
two delegates to the Panama 
Congress, an international con¬ 
ference to discuss affairs of 
interest to the countries of 
North and South America. 
The Senate foolishly and 
violently debated the confirma¬ 
tion of the nominations until 
it was too late for our repre¬ 
sentatives to reach Panama in time for the meeting. 
Two other events of importance during Adams’ 
administration were the completion of the Erie 
Canal in 1825 and the laying of the corner-stone of 
Bunker Hill monument in the same year. 

But Adams’ administration was marked by few 
events of importance, and it is on the whole the 
most uninteresting period in his life. It was also the 
most disappointing to Adams himself, and we cannot 
help feeling sorry for him when he writes, at the close 
of his single term of the presidency, that “the sun of 
his political life sets in the deepest gloom.” 

Later Served in Congress 

He was mistaken, however, in thinking that the 
“sun of his political life” was set. In 1830 he was 
elected to the national House of Representatives, and 
he continued to represent his district in that body 
until his death 18 years later. When some one 
suggested that it was rather “degrading” for him to 
thus step down, Adams replied: “No person could 
be degraded by serving the people as a representative 
in Congress. Nor, in my opinion, would an ex¬ 
president of the United States be degraded by serving 
as a selectman of his town, if elected thereto by the 
people.” Far from being degraded, Adams spent in 
Congress the most brilliant and glorious years of his 
whole career, and earned in his old age by his courage 
and sturdy integrity a fame far above any that he had 
achieved before. 

This arose from the fact that he organized and led 
in that House the opposition to slavery. For seven 
years he fought, in season and out, against the “gag 


JOHN QUINCY ADAMS’ 
ADMINISTRATION(1825-1829) 

Clay Appointed Secretary of State. 

Erie Canal Completed (1825). 
Bunker Hill Monument Erected. 
Steam Railway Construction 
Begun. 

Tariff Becomes a Burning Issue 

(1828). 

Beginning of Democratic and 
Whig Parties. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

15 

















ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 


rule,” which was designed to put an end to anti¬ 
slavery petitions in Congress. In the end the victory 
was won and the “right of petition” was preserved 
as one of the privileges of the people, no matter how 
unpopular their views. 

The “Old Man Eloquent” 

In a day when such orators as Webster, Clay, and 
Calhoun were in public life, Adams yet won for him¬ 
self the title of “Old Man Eloquent.” His claim to 
this was based on the information contained in his 
speeches and not to any charm of appearance or grace 
of voice or manner as an orator. He was short, fat, 
and bald; his voice was high, shrill, and liable to 
break—piercing enough to be heard, but not agreeable. 
In manner he was so restrained and cold that he was 
extremely unpopular in the House. 

But if he was disliked and unkindly treated by 
others, he was in turn uncharitable to them. In his 
voluminous ‘ Diary’ of 12 printed volumes, in which 
he records his feelings and doings, hardly a man in 
public life escapes condemnation. One author wrote 
that, “as one turns the leaves, he feels as though he 
were walking through a graveyard of slaughtered repu¬ 
tations, wherein not many headstones show a few 
words of measured commendation.” This habit of 
harsh criticism cost Mr. Adams much, for it not only 
made him unpopular in life, but even today we find 
it hard to like the man. It should be said, however, 
that he applied the same tests of puritanical severity 
to his own character and acts that he applied to 
others. In all this he is a good example of the Adams 
family—upright, honest, and able far beyond the 
average of their associates, but with a fatal gift for 
tactless speech and unpopularity. 

ADAMS, Samuel (1722-1803). In the midst of the 
troubles which led up to the American Revolution, 
Hutchinson, the Tory governor of Massachusetts, 
wrote to one of his friends: “If it were not for two 
or three Adamses, we should do well enough.” No 
doubt it was “Sam” Adams, the busy thriftless 
politician of the Boston town meeting and radical 
writer for the newspapers, that the good governor 
had chiefly in mind in writing thus feelingly of this 
patriotic family. 

A Father of the Revolution 

Already in 1743, when he was given the degree 
A.M. by Harvard College, Samuel Adams had shown 
the dangerous character of his thoughts, for he had 
taken as the subject of his thesis this question: 
“Whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magis¬ 
trate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be 
preserved.” More than 30 years before the armed 
revolt, his mind was already engaged with those 
questions which were involved in the struggle with 
the mother country. It is thus with good right that 
the historian Fiske says of him that “in the history 
of the American Revolution he is second only to 
Washington.” 

Samuel Adams was a second cousin of John Adams 
and all his life long was a resident of Boston. He had 


ADDAMS, JANE] 

little inclination for the business in which he engaged 
after graduating from college, and more and more 
devoted himself to public affairs. He was a leader 
in the meetings of the workingmen’s “ Caulkers Club” 
(from which perhaps comes our word “caucus”), in 
the town meetings in Faneuil Hall, and later in the 
Old State House where sat the Massachusetts colonial 
assembly of which for a score of years he was the 
clerk. 

The Man who Started the “Tea-Party” 

In 1764 he had become so influential that he was 
chosen to write Boston’s protest against the proposed 
Stamp Act. As a member of the Massachusetts 
assembly, in public meetings, in writings in the news¬ 
papers, and as a member of the Continental Congress 
(1774-1781), he urged determined resistance to tax¬ 
ation of the colonies by Parliament, and early ad¬ 
vocated independence. He was the organizer of the 
“Boston Tea Party,” in 1773. He was not to be 
bought or silenced, and he rendered invaluable 
services not merely in arousing public opinion in his 
own community, but in linking up the movement there 
with that in other colonies, by means of committees 
of correspondence. 

After the first battles of the Revolution, a price was 
set by General Gage on the heads of both “those 
formidable rebels” Samuel Adams and John Han¬ 
cock. As a member of the Continental Congress, 
Samuel Adams signed the Declaration of Indepen¬ 
dence. And after the war was over he helped to 
frame the constitution of Massachusetts, and served 
one term as governor of his native state. 

Samuel Adams, however, was a destructive rather 
than a constructive statesman. He opposed the 
Federal Constitution when it was first submitted to 
the states for ratification, on the ground that it gave 
too great powers to the central government and that 
it was undemocratic in some of its features. But 
later he was brought to support it in the Massachu¬ 
setts convention, when amendments were proposed 
which would render the rights of the people more 
secure. He died at the age of 81, as poor as he 
had always lived. 

ADDAMS, Jane (born 1860). “When I grow up I 
will have a large house, but it will not be built among 
the other large houses, but right in the midst of horrid 
little houses like these.” This was the remark of 
Jane Addams, then a frail thoughtful little girl in 
Cedarville, Ill., when she went with her father one 
day into the poor district of the city. Before that she 
had always supposed that everyone lived in good and 
comfortable houses like her own. 

She never forgot “the horrid little houses” and her 
desire to make people happier. When traveling in 
Europe after she had gone through Rockford College, 
she visited Toynbee Hall in London, the first of many 
“social settlements” where kind-hearted men and 
women voluntarily live in the city slums to aid and 
befriend the very poor. This suggested a way of 
carrying out her dream. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

16 






■- 

Neighboring with the Poor 

In 1889 with a friend, Miss Ellen Gates Starr, 
she moved into Hull House, an old mansion of early 
Chicago days, around which had grown up a crowded 
foreign quarter. Believing that “the things which 
make men alike are finer and better than the things 
that keep them apart,” she put into this house the 
kind of books and pictures and furniture that she 
would wish to have in her own home, and in her 


ADDAMS, JANE 

Today Hull House covers an entire city block and 
is the home of about 50 “residents”—most of them 
college men and women who pay their own expenses 
and give part or all of their time to the activities of 
the settlement and the neighborhood. Other teachers 
and helpers come in from outside. Only a very few 
receive any salary. The same homelike feeling still 
pervades the settlement, and Miss Addams’ beautiful 



HULL HOUSE AND THE WOMAN WHO CREATED IT 



Here we have in one group a picture of Hull House in Chicago, taken from the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets, together with typical 
sc ® n ®. s illustrating the things that are done inside of it, and a portrait of the noble woman who founded it. As a neighbor of the poor people 
W -i v7 e m ^ 1S ii S ^ rlc *’^ ‘ ss Addams and her associates not only do everything for them that the best of neighbors would do, but treat them 
as it they were all members of the Hull House family. In the uppei left-hand corner you see young students of electricity studying out how 
to wire a house. Just below them some modern Greeks are indulging in the sport which was so important a part of the life of the ancient 
Oreeks -wrestling; while in the upper right-hand corner children are giving the play of Puss-in-Boots in the beautiful little theater at Hull 
House. Below them boys with a taste for art are learning to draw, as they do at the big Art Institute; and on Miss Addams’ left is an Irish 
woman spinning, just as she used to do in the old country, making herself very useful and very happy. 


gracious way invited her neighbors to come to see 
her. She helped those who were ill or in trouble; 
she started a day nursery where the little children 
could be properly fed and amused while their mothers 
were at work; and she organized clubs and classes 
of many kinds for the older boys and girls and 
the grown people. Poor, puzzled, friendless immi¬ 
grants of 36 different nationalities were made to feel 
at home, and here in this atmosphere of true democ¬ 
racy they learned to be Americans in the best sense. 

The Good Neighbor of Hull House 
Hull House soon became the most famous of all 
American social settlements. It grew until before long 
it included a fine gymnasium, a well-equipped little 
theater, reading rooms, attractive club rooms, a 
coffee house, and a large hall for dancing and other 
entertainments. There was also equipment for 
teaching woodworking, weaving, basketry, domestic 
science, and other arts and handicrafts. 

contained in the Easy Reference 


personality radiates throughout, extending the same 
welcome to the distinguished visitor and the poor 
laborer. 

A Leader in Social Work 

Similar settlement houses, largely modeled after 
Hull House, have been founded in all of our large 
cities. Many cultured men and women are glad to 
share their advantages in this way with their less 
fortunate neighbors, and at the same time, by living 
in contact with people of other conditions and 
nationalities, to broaden and extend their own 
knowledge and sympathies. 

Jane Addams has long been known as one of the 
foremost citizens not only of Chicago but of the 
United States. No helpful task is too great or too 
small for her hand. She served at one time as munic¬ 
ipal garbage inspector, at another time she was a 
member of the school board. She was influential in 
securing a Juvenile Court for Chicago, and child- 

Fact-/ n d e x at the end of this Work 

17 









ADDAMS, JANE 


ADDITION 


labor, factory, and tenement-house laws. Several 
universities have honored her with degrees and she is 
known throughout the world as a lecturer and writer 
on social problems. At the close of the World War 
she was chairman of the International Committee of 
Women for Permanent Peace. 

Jane Addams’ best-known writings are: ‘Democracy and 
Social Ethics’ (1902); ‘Newer Ideals of Peace’ (1907); ‘The 
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets’ (1909); ‘Twenty Years 
at Hull House’ (1910); ‘A New Conscience and an Ancient 
Evil’ (1911). 

Addition. If a boy can keep a baseball score, 
there’s no reason why he can’t easily learn to add sums 
of any length, if he just keeps cool and is careful. 
And as for the use it will be to him, whether he is 
making change, or preparing a report of the money he 
has spent as treasurer of his baseball team, or figuring 
how much lumber he will need to make a boat-house, 
or doing any of a hundred things he will often want to 
do, he will have to use addition. What he needs to 
do is to practice and practice until he just can’t make 
a mistake in adding. 

Do It Quickly and Do It Right 

Every boy and girl ought to know how to add 
rapidly and correctly. And they will be surprised to 
find how easy it really is to learn, if they only go at it 
the right way. 

Mother and father or brother and sister can help 
any boy by giving him the exercises suggested below. 
He must not bring his work home for somebody else 
to do, or expect to learn addition through any one’s 
effort but his own. No one would like to walk on 
crutches all their lives and your healthy brain does 
not need crutches any more than your healthy body. 
And the people one learns to lean on are not always 
there when you want them. If you have a news¬ 
paper route or do any selling you can hardly expect 
the teacher or somebody at home to be at your elbow 
every time you want to add up what is coming to 
you from a customer. 

And as addition is simple in itself, don’t let the 
idea that it is difficult get into your head for a minute. 
And don’t let anything but addition get into your 
head when you are working at it. Keep your mind 
on it and you won’t forget and have to begin all over 
so many times. 

Here are some suggestions that are useful in gaining 
accuracy and speed in addition: 

( 1 ) Master (he combinations with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 
7, 8, and 9 until you can give them without an instant’s 
hesitation. These combinations, called the “forty-five 
fundamental fads,” are the basis of all addition, for 
they give every possible combination of the digits. 

(2) Write all figures in straight rows and columns. 

(3) Use as few words as possible. In adding 6, 7, 
and 5 don't say “6 and 7 are 13 and 5 makes 18.” 
Merely give the results, “13, 18.” 

(4) Cultivate the habit of adding steadily, but at the 
same lime rapidly. 

(5) Test all your answers . 


The combinations spoken of as the “forty-five 
fundamental facts” are as follows: 


1 

2 

2 

3 

3 

3 

4 

4 

4 

4 

5 

5 

5 5 

5 

6 

1 

1 

2 

1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

1 

2 

3 4 

5 

1 

2 

3 

4 

4 

5 

6 

5 

6 

7 

8 

6 

7 

8 9 

10 

7 

6 

6 

6 

6 


6 

7 

7 

7 

7 

7 

7 

7 

8 

8 

2 

3 

4 

5 


6 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

1 

2 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

9 

10 

8 

8 

8 

8 

8 

8 

9 

9 

9 

9 

9 

9 

9 

9 

9 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

11 

12 

13 

14 15 

16 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 


See How Quickly You Can Do This! 

The accompanying chart will aid in mastering these 
“fundamental facts.” Have someone point rapidly 
to first one and then another, chosen at random, and 
see if you can instantly give the answer. 



Make a game of this and see how quickly you can learn to give 
instantly the sum of each of the above combinations as it is pointed to. 

* Next, to form the habit of adding steadily and 
rapidly, put down a column of figures in any order 
and practice naming the partial sums one 
after the other, as shown in the margin, 
until they can be given without hesitation 
and at a rapid rate. 

Beginning at the bottom of the annexed 
column, we add: 7+8 = 15; 15+9=24, 
etc. Add rapidly, giving successive sums 
only: “15, 24, 31,” etc. 

{Continued on page 24) 


51 

42 

36 

31 

24 

15 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see Index 

18 















\ A Wonderful Dream 



A D D I T I O N 1 



> 




'' 



w 

35 


>3 


.op I* 

(r\ 1 

o°l_ 









































































ADDITION 



In Come the Figures'! 



20 


















































)The Four Signs 


addition] 




21 


































































ADDITION 



Working Out the Sums 



22 



















































































23 








































































































































ADEN 


\ A D D I T I O N 



The accompanying diagram affords an excellent drill 
for rapid work in addition. Draw the diagram on a 
blackboard or large sheet of paper. Then let some¬ 
one write a number in the center circle, and point 



rapidly to one after another of 
the other numbers. You should 
be able to give promptly the 
sum of the center figure with 
any of the outer figures which 
the pointer indicates. Change the center figure often. 


Is My Answer Right? 

For computations in the business and scientific 
world, absolute accuracy is required; so it is necessary 
to have means of checking or testing the correctness of 
a sum. The means most commonly used is to repeat 
the addition. If the columns have been added from 
the bottom up in getting the sum, they are added down 
in testing its correctness. Or if added down at first, 
then in testing, the columns are added from the 
bottom up. 

One way of simplifying the testing 
when columns are long is to write the 
partial sum for each column and then 
find the sum of these partial sums. A 
mistake in any one column can then be 
detected without re-adding all the 
columns. 

In the accompanying example 52 is 
the sum of the first column, 55 of the 
second, etc. Note that the tens column 
is set over one place to the left and the 
hundreds two places, as compared with 
the units column. 

Another means of checking an answer is to break 
the columns, and find the sum of each section, and 
then add these results. The sum of the 
first four numbers in the problem above 2083 
is 2083, the sum of the lower four 2019. 2019 

Since the sum of 2083 and 2019 is 4102, 4202 

it proves that the first result is correct. 

Try These Exercises in Addition 

Here are some exercises in counting for mastering 
the fundamental facts. 

Count into the twenties by 2’s beginning with 1. 
Beginning with 2. 

Count into the thirties by 3’s beginning with 1. With 2. 
With 3. 


283 

976 

428 

396 
478 
896 

397 
248 

52 

55 

35 

4102 


Count into the forties by 4’s beginning with 1. With 2 
With 3. With 4. 

Count into the fifties by 5’s beginning with 1. With 2. 
With 3. With 4. With 5. 

Following the plan suggested above, practice counting 
by 6’s, by 7’s, by 8’s, by 9’s. 


Try these exercises for practice in adding with as 
few words as possible: 


235 



274 


975 



345 


411 



265 

436 



8.54 


214 



758 


253 



748 

578 



375 


328 



327 


167 



392 

396 



346 


569 



864 


399 



679 

These are for 

• practice in 

adding at 

a steady rate: 

3 

5 

6 

7 

5 

6 

4 

2 

5 

4 

6 

7 

8 

9 

2 

4 

4 

3 

7 

3 

8 

3 

8 

9 

9 

9 

7 

8 

1 

2 

3 

4 

6 

7 

3 

8 

3 

3 

5 

9 

9 

7 

4 

3 

4 

5 

4 

4 

2 

5 

7 

2 

9 

3 

6 

6 

5 

5 

5 

6 

7 

7 

8 

4 

7 

9 

9 

2 

8 

9 

3 

4 

6 

7 

7 

5 

6 

8 

8 

4 

4 

8 

9 

8 

3 

6 

6 

5 

6 

5 

5 

3 

8 

3 

6 

9 

7 

6 

5 

5 

4 

6 

5 

7 

7 

7 

5 

9 

9 

9 

8 

9 

4 

4 

6 

6 

6 

6 

8 

6 

6 

2 

7 

9 

6 

7 

3 

2 

5 

7 

7 

7 

4 

8 

2 

5 

6 

4 

5 

3 

5 

6 

6 

7 

7 

7 

8 

8 

6 

3 

8 

7 

9 

9 

6 

7 

9 

8 

9 

6 

6 

5 

8 

9 

9 

9 

8 

5 


Here is an exercise for practice in adding and testing 
answers; it represents the sales of a department store 
for a week: 


Days 

Dry 

Goods 

Boots 

and 

Shoes 

Furni¬ 

ture 

Kitchen 

Utensils 

Gro¬ 

ceries 

Total 

Monday. 

Tuesday. 

Wednesday... 
Thursday.... 

Friday. 

Saturday. 

$89.53 

91.40 

53.35 

62.20 

21.14 

93.27 

$40.75 
19.60 
39.10 
24.70 
'20.50 
61 90 

$25.65 

80.75 

63.48 

15.90 

31.80 

26.50 

$41.58 

38.15 

52.19 

23.63 

18.77 

25.54 

$27.35 

21.17 

33.41 

19.05 

15.46 

54.93 


Total.. 








Copy and complete the above statement. Prove by 
adding the vertical (up and down) and horizontal (across 
the page) totals. 

An important x point to remember is that only like 
quantities can be added. To add cents to dollars, 
the cents are written with a dollar sign and a decimal 
point. $1.75+8c =|1.75+$.08 or 81.83. To add 
yards to feet, the yards are changed to feet or the 
feet to yards. The sum of 6 j r ards and 4 feet equals 
18 feet+4 feet, or 22 feet. 

Aden ( a'den ). The “Gibraltar of the East,” as 
Aden is frequently called, is a British colony on the 
southwestern coast of Arabia, at the southern entrance 
to the Red Sea. The town, which is on a rocky prom¬ 
ontory and is strongly fortified, was acquired by the 
British from the Turks in 1839. It is valued chiefly 
because its possession, together with the ownership 
of the Suez Canal, gives Great Britain control of the 
shortest sea-route to India. 

Aden and a small strip of adjoining territory are 
administered as a British protectorate under the 
government of Bombay, India. The harbor is good 
and Aden is one of the chief coaling stations on the 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

24 

































ADOLESCENCE 


Suez Canal route. There is considerable trade in 
coffee, gums, and hides. Population, about 50,000. 
ADIRONDACK(dd-f-r<5nkJdfc)MOUNTAINS. In north¬ 
eastern New York lies a public playground, the great 
Adirondack forest reserve, more than half as large 
as the State of Connecticut. The rugged beauty of 
its wooded mountains, its silvery streams and lakes, 
the abundant fish and game, and its comparative 
accessibility, make of it a favorite summer resort for 
all eastern America. 

From the romantic waters of Lake George and Lake 
Champlain the mountains are seen as a succession of 
bold rocky headlands with wide receding valleys 
between. Most of the tops are rounded and dome¬ 
like, but here and there sharp peaks jut upward from 
the surrounding sea of verdure. Picturesque passes 
also occur at frequent intervals to delight the traveler 
who journeys by stage or automobile from one lovely 
valley to another. 

The Adirondacks lie between Lake Champlain on the 
east and the St. Lawrence River on the west. Mt. Marcy, 
the highest summit, is 5,344 feet above sea level. The 
forests, especially the white pine, are very valuable. Some 
geographers class the Adirondacks as a part of the Appa¬ 
lachian mountain system, but physically and geologically 
the two are distinct. 

The forest reserve established by the State of New York 
not only preserves the natural beauty of the region and 
provides a great recreation ground; it also tends to prevent 
the destructive alternation of floods and droughts which 
follow when extensive mountain tracts are deprived of their 
forests. A sanitarium, open throughout the year, for the 
treatment of consumptive patients, is located at Saranac 
Lake, one of the most picturesque of the many bodies of 
water scattered throughout the region. 

Adjective. Suppose your little brother is lost 
and you are trying to tell the police what he looks 
like. You say something like this: 

“Johnny is a short, light-haired, blue-eyed, little 
boy.” 

Now the words you have used to describe him— 
short, light-haired, blue-eyed, little —are words that 
you have added to the noun boy to make its meaning 
clearer and more definite. Such words we call 
adjectives, from the Latin word meaning “added to.” 
They are always “added to” nouns or pronouns and, 
as we say, modify them. 

Adjectives are “compared” to show degree—as 
deep, deeper, deepest. The first of these forms is the 
positive degree, the second is the comparative, and 
the last is the superlative. Sometimes more and 
most are used, especially when the addition of the 
syllables er and est would make the word difficult to 
pronounce; as, beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful. 
A few adjectives have irregular comparison—as, 
good, better, best; bad, worse, worst; little, less, least; 
many or much, more, most. 

Adjectives which merely describe are called descriptive 
or qualifying adjectives. Adjectives which point out or 
locate {this, that, yonder, etc.) are called demonstrative 
adjectives, from the Latin verb meaning “to point out.” 
There are several kinds of demonstrative adjectives: numeral 
adjectives {two, three, etc.); ordinal adjectives {first, second, 
etc.); articles {a, an, the). Interrogative adjectives ask a 

contained in the Easy Reference 


question {Which book? What man?). Possessive adjectives 
denote possession {my book, his pencil). 

One of the commonest mistakes in the use of adjectives 
is to use the superlative degree instead of the comparative 
when only two objects are compared—as, “John is the 
tallest of the two boys,” for “John is the taller of the two 
boys.” There is also much perplexity as to whether an 
adjective or an adverb should be used after certain verbs. 
As a general rule, the adverb should be used if it could be 
replaced by a phrase denoting manner; the adjective should 
be used if some part of the verb “to be” could be substituted 
for the verb. Thus: “He felt cold ” (that is, he was cold); 
but, “He felt rapidly around for the matches” (expressing 
manner). “She looked shy"; but, “She looked shyly up.” 
“The man appeared kind"-, but, “The man appeared sud¬ 
denly.” Sometimes either adjective or adverb may be used 
with little difference of meaning; as, “They arrived safe 
(or safely).” 

Adoles'CENCE. The word adolescence is used to 
designate the period of transition from childhood to 
adult life. It comes from a Latin term which means 
to grow up. It may be conveniently divided into two 
stages: (1) that of early adolescence, beginning at the 
age of 11 or 12 in girls and 13 or 14 in boys, and last¬ 
ing till about the age of 16 or 18; (2) that of late 
adolescence, from 16 to 21 in girls and 18 to 25 in boys. 
Of course lines of demarcation cannot be too rigidly 
drawn, or characteristics of special periods too strong¬ 
ly emphasized, particularly as the nature of develop¬ 
ment varies considerably with different persons. 

The Dawn of Manhood and Womanhood 

After the somewhat slow growth of later child¬ 
hood there is at the beginning of adolescence a 
sudden shooting up in height, closely followed by a 
rapid increase in weight. In both boys and girls the 
body now begins to assume the adult form, and 
pronounced differences appear. In boys the beard 
begins to grow and the voice changes and deepens, 
the rapid growth of the larynx making accurate 
control of the vocal organs for a time impossible. 
Boys often exhibit, and are sensitive to, awkwardness 
in the management of their overgrown bodies. 
Latent capacities and interests develop, the features 
change to show new characters, and hereditary in¬ 
fluences become more pronounced. 

The essential characteristic of early adolescence is 
the unfoldment of the functions pertaining to sex. 
The youth suddenly finds himself susceptible to the 
influence of the opposite sex. A new interest in dress 
and personal appearance usually develops, and often 
a tendency to show off on account of the newly 
awakened regard for the good opinion of persons of 
the opposite sex. These sex instincts, like all other 
instincts, should be properly directed, strengthened, 
or restrained, in view of their future function on the 
one hand and the danger of perversion on the other. 

The distinctive mental and emotional traits of 
this period are perhaps more variable than the 
physical ones, but scarcely less pronounced. In 
thought and feeling, as well as in appearance, the boy 
becomes specifically masculine and the girl feminine. 
It is a time of great increase in mental and emotional 
vigor, of tremendous enlargement of the sphere of 
interests and broadening of the mental horizon. 

work 


Fact-Index at the end of t his 

25 






The beauties of nature, of poetry, and of art begin to 
appeal, and the soul can be profoundly stirred by 
religious and ideal sentiments. The youth comes to 
look upon himself in the light of his larger relations 
to the race and to society, and to attempt a personal 
readjustment to the larger view of life thus opened up. 
Intellectually he becomes capable of comprehending 
broader generalizations and larger thoughts. Periods 
of enthusiastic energy and noble attempt at high 
achievement often alternate with periods of languor, 
depression, and doubt. 

Sympathetic Treatment Needed 

The stage here gradually shades off into that of 
late adolescence, which is essentially a time of fixing 
the framework of the personal habits, ideals, and 
relationships of life. It is normally a time of choosing 
a life profession and of taking the initial steps toward 
entering upon it. It marks the transition from a state 
of dependence upon others in matters material and 
intellectual to one of independence, showing itself in 
the development of a characteristic personality 
capable of thinking and acting as such. Outbreaks 
against restraint and authority often seem to occur 
almost instinctively at this period, and should be 
dealt with sympathetically by parents and teachers. 
Much needless and harmful friction and misunder¬ 
standing are caused by the failure of adults to com¬ 
prehend the real nature and cause of these outbreaks. 

Professor James’s words of encouragement in this 
connection have been so helpful to many adolescents 
that they are here quoted at length: “Let no youth 
have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, 
whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faith¬ 
fully busy each hour of the working day he may 
safely leave the final result to itself. He can, with 
perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine 
morning to find himself one of the competent ones of 
his generation, in whatever pursuit he has singled 
out. Young people should know this truth in advance. 
The ignorance of it has engendered more faint-heart¬ 
edness in youths embarking upon arduous careers 
than all other causes put together.” 

Adonis ( a-do'nis ). Of all the youths beloved by 
the goddess Aphrodite (Venus), Adonis was the most 
fair, and for him the glorious goddess forsook the 
heights of Mount Olympus to wander through earthly 
woods and fields. But Adonis was a bold young 
hunter, and his rash pursuit of dangerous game caused 
Aphrodite many anxious moments. In vain she 
besought him to forego the hunt and remain with her. 
Adonis laughingly escaped and continued to join 
the other hunters in his favorite sport. 

Then one day he came upon a wild boar especially 
large and fierce. When he wounded it with his 
spear, it turned and charged him, burying its tusks 
in his sides and rending and trampling the poor youth 
to death. 

The grief of Aphrodite at this mishap was pitiful. 
Rushing to Adonis’ side, she knelt over him and burst 
into a passion of tears. As they dropped upon the 


ground these were changed into anemones, while the 
red drops from Adonis’ side were transformed into 
red roses. A Greek poet, in describing the lament 
of Aphrodite, says: 

As many drops as from Adonis bled, 

So many tears the sorrowing Aphrodite shed: 

For every drop on earth a flower there grows: 
Anemones for tears; for blood the rose. 

Time did not soften Aphrodite’s grief, and going 
to Olympus she implored Zeus to restore her lover to 
earth. And so it was arranged that Adonis should 
spend one half of every year in the upper world. 
In the early spring he left the Elysian Fields to join 
his beloved, and on his path the flowers bloomed and 
birds sang to show their joy at his coming. But when 
winter came he returned to the land of the dead, and 
all nature drooped in mourning at his departure. 
ADRIANOPLE ( ad-rl-a-no'pl ). Named in honor of 
the emperor Hadrian (117-138 a.d.), this city, the 
scene of many important events in the troubled 
history of the Balkan lands, lies 130 miles northwest 
of Constantinople. Near it the Visigoths in 378 a.d. 
won the memorable victory over the emperor Valens, 
which began the downfall of the Roman Empire. 
The Turks captured Adrianople in 1360, and made it 
their capital until they won Constantinople nearly 
a hundred years later. 

In 1913 Adrianople was taken from the Turks by 
the Balkan allies, but was restored in the peace 
which followed. Its transfer to Greece, following 
the close of the World War (1920), was one of the 
causes of the Turkish nationalist rising against the 
Paris peace decisions. Population, about 80,000. 
Adriatic (a-dri-dt'ic) SEA. This great arm of the 
Mediterranean separates Italy from Trieste, Croatia, 
Dalmatia, and Albania, and is sometimes regarded as 
peculiarly an Italian sea. Its greatest length is 450 
miles and its mean breadth 90 miles. The Po is the 
most important river flowing into the Adriatic Sea, 
and the chief cities bordering it are Venice, Trieste, 
Fiume, Ancona, and Brindisi. 

From the 12th to the 18th centuries the rulers of 
Venice each year went through the form of throwing 
a ring into the Adriatic (called “wedding the Adriat¬ 
ic”), in token of their claim to dominion over that 
sea. The name comes from the little town of Adria, 
just north of the mouth of the Po, which though once 
a flourishing seaport is now 15 miles inland. 

ADVERB. When your father asks you how you got 
along in your studies yesterday, you answer: 

“I did well,” or “I did poorly.” 

You have answered his question by adding the 
word well or 'poorly to the verb did. Words that are 
thus added to verbs to modify their meaning are 
called adverbs, getting their name from the Latin 
words ad meaning “to,” and verbum,“ verb.” Adverbs 
may also modify adjectives, other adverbs, or prepo¬ 
sitions—as, very tall (modifying an adjective); too slowly 
(modifying another adverb); just above the house 
(modifying a preposition). 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

26 







Orchomenu: 


f AT HENS 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


The most interesting characteristic of adverbs is 
their great variety of meanings. They may express 
time {today), place {here), manner {quickly), degree 
{very), number {once, twice), exclusion {but, once, 
only), etc. Some adverbs, called conjunctive adverbs, 
also connect adverbial clauses with other parts of a 
sentence—as, “He left before I arrived.” Others, 
called interrogative 
adverbs, introduce 
questions — as, 

“When did you 
come?” 

Most adverbs are 
formed from adjec¬ 
tives by adding the 
suffix ly —as, great 
(adj.), greatly 
(adv.); real, really; 
splendid, splendidly. 

But some adverbs 
have the same form 
as the adjectives; 
for example, “a fast 
train” (adj.), and 
“run fast” (adv.). 

Adverbs are gen¬ 
erally compared ( see 
Adjective) by the use 
of more and most; an 
example is, freely, more 
freely, most freely. 

Some, however, are 
compared like adjec¬ 
tives by adding er and 
est. Thus we say, 

“John runs fast, but 
Henry runs faster." 

“Y ou and J ohn 
climbed high, but I 
climbed highest." The 
adverbs well, badly, 
much, little, have the 
same irregular com¬ 
parison as the corres¬ 
ponding adjectives, 
good, etc. 

The chief difficulty 
in the use of adverbs 
comes from confusion 
with adjectives. Real 
kind, doing fine, write 
good, etc. are common mistakes for really or very kind, 
doing well, write well or neatly or legibly, etc. 

Aegean {e-ge'an) CIVILIZATION. In the island- 
strewn Aegean Sea, European civilization had its 
birth; and across its waters, for 5,000 years, have 
interlaced the threads of European, Asiatic, and 
African commerce and history. Here Europe thrusts 
southward its easternmost peninsula toward the 
boldly jutting mass of Asia Minor. Across the nar¬ 
row basin between, East and West have faced and 
fought each other since the dawn of history. 

What a panorama unfolds before the imagination 
when one thinks of the nations whose vessels have 
plowed the Aegean—ancient Egyptians, Cretans, 


and Phoenicians; Persians, Athenians, and Spartans; 
Romans, Goths, Venetians, and Arabs; modern 
Turks, Greeks, and Italians—these are some of the 
many peoples who have made history in this sea, 
down to the World War of 1914-18, when its islands 
were seized as coigns of vantage against Turkey and 
her allies. 


This historic sea is the northeastern arm of the 
Mediterranean, and forms a body of water about 
twice as large as Lake Michigan. It is partly shut 
off to the south by the long narrow island of Crete, 
which lies squarely in the middle. Look at the 
map and see how thickly it is dotted with islands, 
which form a natural bridge between Europe and 
the East. 

Civilization Comes from Egypt 
More than 5,000 years ago, at a time when the 
ancestors of the modern European peoples were still 
barbarians,—without metals, without money, without 
writing, without sailing ships, and without comfort¬ 
able houses—the people who lived in this Aegean 


fW x of ‘^ 

A Wtrov Br~% 40 °X. 

rt imbros .VAsianXenter of 
C"-'/ Aeoeaiy’Civ.Mization 

mo d erri.gt r act ares 
500 years ago 

£ 


v 

K CHIOS 

r, ^ 

, 3 


Citie s^were^the f irst i n h£ - 
Europe to feel tHe^Cretarn% 
/ influence 






,7 


alicarnassus 

% - <?p 


CARPATHOS 


^ 1 O’, d, ^ 

CYTHERA «>* ^ V 

^ C 

The Cretan Sea-Kings carried on, _ _ _ T 2V„ 

commerce with. Sicily and Italy fCSspaSa* . 

"ydOGnossus” 

'S’ Important centers Phaest 

of Aegean civilization Where European Civilization was born 

through contact with Egypt to the South\ 

2 O e E- ___ \26°E. 

In Europe, civilization dawned in the three cities of Mycenae, Argos, and Tiryns, on the mainland of Greece. 
But this civilization began in the island of Crete, which in turn owed the beginning of its development in the 
arts and industries to Egypt and Asia. From Crete the light spread not only to Greece, but was carried by the 
Cretan sea kings, in connection with their commerce, to Sicily and Italy on the west, and to Troy on the north. 
We are apt to think of Troy as only an imaginary place, the creation of a great poet’s brain, but how substantial 
it seems when we know that it really existed some three thousand years ago, and that it had paved streets, 
formidable stone walls, and elaborate buildings. The great palace in Cnossus (Crete) had running water, 

bathrooms, and other “modern” conveniences. 


ADVERB 






















Examples of Aegean Art 


|aegean civilization 



basin had taken the first steps upward from barbarism. 
Under the influence of their highly civilized neighbors 
of the valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris and Eu¬ 
phrates, they too developed a civilization worthy to 
be compared with any that had before existed. In 
Crete and at Troy and elsewhere on the mainland, 
they built paved cities with massive fortifications. 


T his contact first took place between Crete, the 
southernmost of the Aegean islands, and the Egyp¬ 
tians, who were only a three days’ sail to the south. 
By 2000 b.c. the Cretans had become a highly civi¬ 
lized people. Their war and trading galleys made 
the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean a 
Cretan lake, and the kings of Crete received tribute 



AEGEAN ART 1,000 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST 


While the Greeks were still unlettered barbarians, the skilled artists of the Aegean were turning out such wares as those shown above. The 
great ornamented oil-jar—large enough to hold one of the Forty Thieves of Ali Baba in the ‘Arabian Nights’—was found in the great palace 
at Cnossus (Crete). The marble throne is from the throne room of the same palace. Above is a famous gold cup found at Vaphio (near 
Sparta), with marvelous representations of the netting of wild bulls. The wine-jar ( amphora ) shows typical Cretan use of sea figures in 
decoration. Most wonderful of all is the tiny ivory statue of the Cretan snake goddess, remarkable alike for the grace and charm of the 
figure and its extremely modern flounced costume. It comes to us like a breath of today across the 3,000 years which separate us from 

those recently discovered times. 


They raised great stone palaces, richly decorated with 
paintings and sculptural ornaments, and equipped 
with running water, bathrooms, drainage, and other 
conveniences which we regard as typically modern. 
They developed an art of extraordinary interest, 
producing work in pottery, metals, and carved gems 
that has rarely been surpassed. 

Crete the Center of Mycenaean Civilization 
We call this civilization the Aegean civilization, 
and the people who developed it we call the Mediter¬ 
ranean race (see Races of Mankind). We know that 
this people had lived in the Aegean basin from far 
back in the Stone Age. But they did not begin to 
progress from barbarism to civilization until about 
3000 b.c., when they first came into frequent contact 
with the flourishing and progressive Oriental peoples, 
especially the Egyptians. 


from many dependencies. The great legendary sea- 
king of Crete was Minos, and from his name the 
term “Minoan” Age has been applied to the whole 
period of nearly 2,000 years, when Cretan influence 
was dominant in the Aegean. 

The first dwellers on the Grecian mainland to feel 
this influence were the people of the gulf of Argos, 
which looks south directly towards Crete, and was 
only a two days’ sail for the adventurous Cretan 
traders. The rude inhabitants of Mycenae and 
Tiryns, the two chief settlements on the Argive plain, 
bought the beautiful wares of the Cretan traders, 
and in course of time developed a high civilization of 
their own. At one time, before Crete was known to 
be the center of this civilization, the name “Myce¬ 
naean Age” was given to the period when Mycenae 
and Tiryns flourished (1500-1200 b.c.), because of the 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


28 


place 


see information 



















wonderful gold cups, sculptures, and other articles 
discovered there. Other cities on the Greek peninsula 
and on the Aegean islands shared in this culture, 
which was spread as far as Sicily, Italy, and Spain by 
the roving Cretan traders. 

Troy One of Its Outposts 

On the mainland of Asia Minor, too, the same 
general type of civilization sprang up, beginning there 
1,500 years before the great palaces of Mycenae and 
Tiryns were built. The famous city of Troy, in the 
northwestern corner of Asia Minor, near the shores 
of the Hellespont, was the Asian center of this Aegean 
civilization. At first a mere trading village, by 
2500 b.c. Troy had become a rich and sumptuous 
capital, scarcely inferior to its great rival Cnossus, 
the capital of Crete. In another thousand years Troy 
had spread its power over its neighbors and had 
become the mistress of a considerable kingdom (see 
Troy). 

But by the time the use of iron had become common 
in the Aegean (about 1000 b.c.), the widespread 
Aegean civilization had received its death blow at the 
hands of Indo-European invaders from the north. 
These peoples we know as the Greeks. At that time 
they were still rude barbarians. In wave after wave 
they swept down into the peninsula of Greece and 
across the Aegean. The proud kingdoms of Mycenae 
and Troy and Cnossus fell before their resistless 
advance, and were so completely overwhelmed that 
their memory survived only in confused traditions 
whose meaning we are only now beginning to unravel. 

A New World Revealed by Excavations 

Two generations ago men knew nothing of this 
first great chapter in European history. The palaces 
and vases and weapons and paintings of this pre- 
Greek epoch lay silted over beneath the sands of the 
ages. It was not until Heinrich Schliemann in 1870 
began to dig down through the deposits that hid the 
buried city of Troy, that the story of Aegean civili¬ 
zation began dimly to be suspected (see Schliemann, 
Heinrich). Then followed excavations at Mycenae 
and Tiryns and other places, until today we have a 
great number of remains of this forgotten civilization, 
which tell its story as eloquently as words. 

Nowhere else have such impressive survivals of the 
earliest Aegean culture been found as in the island 
of Crete. At Cnossus and Phaestus and other cities 
of Crete, excavators have uncovered great palaces, 
with a wealth of weapons, tools, pottery, statuettes, 
and other objects. Here too they have found thou¬ 
sands of clay tablets covered with writing, which we 
are still unable to read. Pictures of bull-fights, festal 
processions, crowds, and acrobats show us what a 
highly developed civilization they enjoyed, curiously 
like our own in some respects. The tiny statuettes 
show us ladies’ costumes with tight bodices, flounced 
skirts, and elaborate coiffures like those which recur 
from time to time in modern fashions. 

A half-century of patient labor with pick and shovel 
has thus revealed to us one of the most fascinating 


periods of history. Now that Turkish power in the 
Aegean has at last been overthrown, the work of 
excavation can be pushed with renewed energy, and 
new discoveries will doubtless enable us to increase 
our knowledge of the men who first brought the light 
of civilization to Europe. 

From the dawn of history to the present, most of the 
people inhabiting the Aegean islands have been of this ancient 
Mediterranean race. Intermixtures, however, have occurred 
with Greeks and later conquerors. From the Roman con¬ 
quest of the Mediterranean almost down to our own times, 
the islands have worn the yoke of foreign domination. 
When Greece at last shook off Turkish domination (1821- 
1830), many of the islands were joined to the new Hellenic 
kingdom. Nearly a century later the Balkan wars and the 
World War of 1914-18 restored most of the remainder to 
Greek rule. 

AENEAS (e-ne'as). According to the stories which 
the old Romans loved to tell, their imperial City of the 
Seven Hills was settled by men descended from the 
heroes of lofty-towered Troy. Aeneas, son of Anchises 
and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus), was the leader 
under whom this little band of Trojans reached Italy 
and settled on the plain of Latium. 

Aeneas, according to the story, was the bravest of 
all the Trojans after Hector. When Troy was con¬ 
quered and burned, he escaped from the city with old 
Anchises on his shoulders and leading his young son 
by the hand. For seven years he and his companions 
wandered over the Mediterranean in their swift- 
oared ships. 

Near Carthage on the African coast Aeneas was 
wrecked, and the Carthaginian queen Dido loved 
him and begged him to stay. But the gods sent him 
wandering again, and Dido killed herself for grief. 

After further wanderings Aeneas came at last to 
Latium, a land in central Italy, whose king welcomed 
him and gave him his daughter in marriage. For 
years, so the story goes, Aeneas reigned happily over 
the united Trojans and Latins. Then in battle with 
the Etruscans he vanished; and his subjects, failing 
to find his body, believed that he had been carried to 
heaven, and worshiped him as a god. 

Aeneas is the hero of the most famous epic in Latin, the 
‘Aeneid’ of Vergil. There he is frequently called “the pious 
Aeneas” because of his loyalty and devotion to his father 
Anchises. 

AEOLUS ( e'o-lus ). In a wonderful island in the 
western Mediterranean Sea dwelt the ruler of the 
winds, the god Aeolus, son of Poseidon (Neptune). 
With him lived Boreas, the god of the fierce north 
wind; Notus, the south wind that brought fogs and 
rain; Eurus, the bleak east wind; and Zephyrus, the 
gentle wind from the west. 

Once Odysseus (Ulysses) touched at the island in 
the course of his wandering return from Troy; and 
Aeolus, wishing to hasten Odysseus’ return home, 
gave him all the unfavorable winds—the north, south, 
and east—safely confined in an ox-hide bag. 

With the west wind blowing steadily, and the other 
winds safely imprisoned, Odysseus’ ship flew swiftly 
homeward. But on the tenth day the sailors, believ- 


corxtained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

29 








THE GREAT STORY-TELLER WHO MADE THE ANIMALS TALK 


This is the famous old story-teller Aesop entertaining a group ot eager listeners on a hillside on some afternoon in the golden days 
of Greece, the Greece of long ago. How the Greek boys must have learned to love the sight of that homely face and called out to 
each other as they saw him coming: “Oh, here’s that wonderful man that makes the animals talk!” And the grownups liked 
his stories just as well, for in them Aesop tucked away a lot of sound advice and shrewd criticism of human weaknesses that apply 
just as much today as in the far-away days when first he told them. Perhaps that is why they have lived so long. 


ing a treasure was in the bag, opened it while Odysseus 
slept. The released winds then blew the ship back to 
the island. There Aeolus, angry at the abuse of his 
kindness, refused the ship further aid. 

From Aeolus is named the Aeolian harp, a musical instru¬ 
ment made by stretching catgut strings or wires over a thin 
sounding box, the strings being tuned as in a violin. When 
placed in a partially closed window, where there is a draught 
of air, the passing of the wind over its strings produces 
strange and melancholy musical sounds, varying with the 
rise and fall of the breezes. 

AESOP ( e'sdp ). The frogs, according to the fable, 
were grieved because they had no king and sent 
ambassadors to Zeus, chief of the gods, to ask him for 
a ruler. Realizing that the frogs were very stupid, 
Zeus cast down a log into the pond. The frogs were 
terrified at the splash it made as it hit the water, and 
sought shelter at the bottom. When they noticed that 
the log did not move they grew to despise this lifeless 
ruler and climbed over the log and squatted upon it. 

After some time they again sent messengers who 
requested the god to appoint another sovereign. 

For any subject not found in its 


This time Zeus sent an eel to the pond. He was an 
easy-going, good-natured fellow, and the frogs 
thought that he too made a very poor king. 

So they sent a third time to the god to ask for a 
different ruler. Zeus was now out of patience and 
sent them a stork, who each day ate up a frog or 
two until soon there were none left to croak and 
complain. 

This story, which is said to refer to the seizure of 
power over Athens by the tyrant Pisistratus, is a very 
good example of Aesop’s fables. Tradition says that 
Aesop, who lived from about 620 to 560 B.c., was 
originally a Greek slave, ugly and deformed in 
person but of brilliant mind. In his fables animals 
are made to act and talk as human beings, and moral 
lessons and bits of wisdom are conveyed in such a 
forceful and delightful way that they have been 
popular with young and old for many centuries. 

Aesop was freed by his master after a time, and 
gained such a reputation that he was invited to live 
at the court of Croesus, King of Lydia. His end 

Iphabetical place see information 

30 





[ 


Europeans Not Wanted 


AFGHANISTAN 


came, it is said, when he was sent by Croesus to the 
temple of Apollo, at Delphi, where he so aroused the 
anger of the Delphians that he was thrown from a 
precipice. 

Aesop did not write out his fables, but recited them and 
they were handed down from memory. Over two centuries 
later an Athenian wrote down the fables as they were then 
told, and still later a Greek named Babrius made another 
collection of them. For a thousand years they were lost to 
memory, until a copy 
of the collection made 
by Babrius was found 
in the monastery of Mt. 

Athos in 1844. It is 
from this collection that 
later translations have 
been made. 

Afghanistan 

(df-gan-i-stan'). On 
Tuesday and Friday 
mornings long lines of 
shaggy one-humped 
camels and stout 
heavy-shouldered 
yabus (horses) enter 
each end of the most 
important gateway 
into Afghanistan — 

Ivhyber Pass. Only 
twice a week does the 
Amir, the absolute 
monarch of the 
Afghans, undertake 
to police the pass so 
that travelers will not 
be set upon and rob¬ 
bed by the maraud¬ 
ing Afridi tribes, who 
lie in wait for unwary 
comers. 

The incoming and 
outgoing caravans 
meet about noon at a half-way station. It is the 
hour of prayer. The rocky flat of the dry river-bed 
at the side of the dusty road is then dotted with 
rectangular bits of color—wonderful prayer-rugs on 
which kneel the turbanned figures of the Moham¬ 
medan camel-drivers and traders bobbing up and 
down, their long arms extended in front of them, as 
they worship Allah their god and Mohammed his 
prophet. 

The incoming caravans start from Peshawar, the 
nearest railway terminus of British India. Occasion¬ 
ally a Hindu, perhaps a shopkeeper returning to 
Kabul, the capital of the Amir, is a traveler in this 
motley crowd; and sometimes a white-faced European 
—but rarely. For a European must have a special 
permit, vised by both British and Afghan authorities, 
before he is allowed to enter this forbidden country. 

Into India these shuffling beasts of burden carry 
gorgeous embroideries and carpets from Bokhara and 
Persia; wool, silk, dried fruits, madder, and asafetida, 
much liked by the Hindu as a food seasoning; horses 

contained in the Easy Reference 


for the Indian army; hides and tobacco. Back into 
their mountain fastnesses they take cotton goods, tea, 
and sugar. 

The Afghan is primarily a soldier and farmer, and 
looks with scorn upon all forms of handicraft and 
shopkeeping. The word “Afghan” means “noisy 
and turbulent,” and this warlike and treacherous 
people seem to merit the name. They claim descent 

from the lost tribes 
of Israel and have 
decidedly Jewish 
features. Every 
educated Afghan 
can read and speak 
Persian, which is the 
language of the court 
and of literature. 

The importance of 
Afghanistan, the area 
of which (about 
245,000 square 
miles) is a little less 
than that of Texas, 
lies in its situation 
as a “buffer state” 
between British 
India and Russia. 
Two costly wars 
(1838-42and 1878-80), 
plus a constant sub¬ 
sidy from the Anglo- 
Indian government, 
have enabled the 
British to control the 
foreign policy of Af¬ 
ghanistan, although 
it is independent in 
local matters. In 
the second Afghan 
war the famous 
English general Lord Roberts made a sensational 
march from Kabul to relieve a British force besieged 
at Kandahar. This feat impressed the Afghans with 
the power of the British, which had been shaken by 
earlier disasters. During the World War of 1914-18, 
German-Turkish intrigue resulted in the murder of 
the reigning Amir, and an unsuccessful attack by the 
Afghans on British outposts. 

Geographically Afghanistan is a lofty plateau on which 
very high mountain ranges extend in a general southwesterly 
direction from the Hindu Kush to the Persian boundary, 
sloping off into desert country in the south. A branch of the 
Bussian Transcaspian railway terminates about 150 miles 
north of Herat, at the boundary and a British-Indian railway 
carries passengers as far as Peshawar, a few miles southeast 
of the entrance to Khyber Pass. No railway actually enters 
Afghanistan. This is the result of a deliberate policy of ex¬ 
clusion on the part of the Afghans, and of international 
jealousies. Trade routes with fairly good roads lead into 
1 urkestan and India, and connect the principal cities of 
Afghanistan—Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar, and Herat. The 
mineral resources of Afghanistan are gold and silver (in 
small quantities), coal, iron, antimony, lead, sulphur, gyp¬ 
sum, and niter. Population, about 6,400,000. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

31 


AFGHANISTAN AND ITS MOUNTAIN WALLS 



2 looks a ,! r< ;Stless as the sea, so we are not surprised to learn 
that Afghan” means “noisy and turbulent,” for mountaineers the world over 
are warlike. Few Europeans or Americans visit this “forbidden land » and 
none is allowed to enter without a firman or permit signed by the Amir’ The 
map shows plainly the importance of Afghanistan as a “buffer state ” lying 
between Great Britain’s Indian possessions on the south and portions of the 
former Russian Empire on the north. 












An Interior Long Unknown 



The BLACK 

A FRICA. Six thousand 
" years ago Africa was 
the home of the most 
civilized nation of the 
world, yet today we 
may say that the civili¬ 
zation of Africa has just 
begun. The work of the 
ancient Egyptians, great 
as it appears, was a mere 
scratch on the surface of 
the vast African continent. Farther west Phoenician 
traders settled and laid the foundation of Carthage, 
which for a time challenged the supremacy of Rome. 
But only a few ruins of the Carthaginians also are 
left to mark the scene of their flourishing culture. 

One after another Greeks, Romans, Vandals, and 
Arabs occupied the Mediterranean fringe of the 
“Dark Continent.” Great cities were built, prosper¬ 
ous states grew up, arts and letters flourished, 
Christianity was established and then succeeded by 


CONTINENT 

caravans. A few ad¬ 
venturers landed on the 
west coast seeking ivory 
and slaves, and others 
traded for gold on the 
eastern shores. Bold 
navigators touched now 
and then at southern 
points on the way to 
India. But of the vast 
interior nothing was 
surely known. America was discovered, colonized, 
conquered, and civilized, while Africa remained a mys¬ 
terious land. Australia opened its doors to the white 
man, while the Congo forests still barred his way. 
Explorers came ever nearer to the North and the 
South Poles, before they had succeeded in tracing the 
full course of the Equator across the tangled forest 
interior of Africa. 

The story of how the dark veil which had hung 
almost undisturbed for ages was suddenly torn aside 


MAN’S Vast and Mysterious 

Extent. —From Cape Blanc (37° 21' N.) to Cape Agulhas (34° 51' S.); 
and from Cape Verde (17° 33' W.) to Cape Guardafui (51° 21' E.). 
Length, 5,000 miles; breadth, 4,600 miles; area, 11,262,000 square 
miles. 

Population. —150,000,000 blacks, 20,000,000 light races. 

Sahara Desert. —Area, 3,500,000 square miles, the largest desert 
in the world. 

Chief Rivers. —Nile (4,000 miles); Congo (about 2,800 miles—great¬ 
est volume of water of any river in the world except the Amazon); 
Niger (3,500 miles); Zambezi (1,800 miles). 

Highest Mountain. —Kilimanjaro (19,720 feet above the sea). 

Largest Lake. —Victoria Nyanza (230 miles long), next to Lake Superior 
the largest in the world. 

Greatest Cataract. —Victoria Falls on Zambezi River, 400 feet high 
and one mile wide . 


LIVING CAIRO IN A CEMETERY OF DEAD CITIES 



The Cairo we know today was founded away back in 968, more than 500 years before Columbus discovered America. But that was 
a comparatively recent event in the history of Egypt, for in a space of some 18 miles around the site of the Cairo of today, many cities 
had previously risen and crumbled back to ruin. Among these cities were Memphis and Heliopolis and a town named “Babylon.” This 
Babylon was founded by immigrants from Mesopotamia who named it after the big Babylon, just as we have small cities scattered over the 
United States named after the big cities; 5 Philadelphias, for example, 8 Edinburghs, 9 Londons, and 18 Parises. 


Mohammedanism. But none of these peoples ever 
measured its strength against the mysterious forces 
of the interior, or reached beyond a narrow strip along 
the northern sea. The roots of civilization remained 
planted in Europe and Asia. The faces of the settlers 
were always turned northward, while a hundred miles 
to the south the silent wilderness of desert or jungle 
watched night and day, ready to swallow up their 
work the instant their vigilance was relaxed. 

Africa Long a Land of Mystery 
Picture this immense territory lying at Europe’s 
door for thousands of years, but always keeping its 
secret, hiding its treasures and its millions of in¬ 
habitants. Reports of giant apes and dwarf peoples 
came out of the interior by means of rare Arab 


in a brief 25 years is one of the most romantic pages 
in the history of civilization. But before we consider 
that adventurous period, we must see why it was that 
Africa remained so long impenetrable. 

Why Africa Remained Dark So Long 
Turn to the map of Africa as we know it today. 
From the tip of Cape Blanc in the Mediterranean 
to Cape Agulhas at the extreme south, the continent 
measures 5,000 miles. From Cape Verde in the west 
to Cape Guardafui in the east, the width is 4,600 
miles. Between these four points lies a territory of 
11,262,000 square miles, nearly one and one-half times 
the size of North America, three times as large as 
Europe, and more than one-fifth of all the land area 
in the world. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

32 













| Why Africa Remained Dark 

But consider how compact this mass of land 
appears. Cut off by water from the rest of the world, 
except for the 80-mile strip of the Suez isthmus in 
the northeast, Africa presents an almost unbroken 
coast on all sides. Compare this with the twisting 
outlines of Europe, with its maze of gulfs and bays, 


africa| 


promontories, peninsulas and 
islands, and you will see the 
first answer to the African 
puzzle. Africa’s armor is tight¬ 
ly welded; there is little or 
nothing to “take hold of.” 
If you should set out from the 
north end of the famous Suez 
Canal and walk around Alrica 
without leaving the coast line, 
you would travel only 16,100 
miles. If you do the same for 
Europe, which is less than one- 
third as large, you will walk 
three times as far. The saw¬ 
tooth shores of tiny Norway 
alone wriggle on for nearly 
12,000 miles. 

Few Harbors to Welcome 
Ships 

Naturally, therefore, Africa 
offered few sheltering harbors, 
and early seafarers did not 
come often or linger long on 
such inhospitable coasts. 

Consider next the structure 


This ocean of sand, spread out across the continent 
for 3,500,000 square miles, greater in size than the 
whole United States, is without a single river, from 
the Nile on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west. 
Here and there those who know the way can find an 
oasis, a rare spot where a bit of water has forced its 


BIG CHIEFS—THREE OF THEM I 



way to the surface, giving life 
to date palms, acacia bushes, 
and a patch of green herbage. 
Straggling from one distant oasis 
to another are ancient caravan 
routes, along which are scattered 
the whitened bones of men and 
beasts, bleached by the sun and 
the dry sirocco or simoom winds, 
or buried in the ever-shifting 
sand. 

The only living things to be 
seen, aside from a few prowling 
jackals, are occasional hooded 
figures mounted on camels, the 
“ships of the desert”—for the 
camel is the only pack animal 
that can stand the fearful test 
of the Sahara. The wayfarers 
may be wild Tuareg tribesmen, 
the pirates of the sand, cruising 
swiftly in search of a caravan to 
plunder; or they may be the 
swifter meharistes, the French 
___ desert police, recruited 1,200 
dis _ strong in the far north and 


» i , ., ,, x ’ , . Among their own people these three are very _ 

OI tne land ltseil. In contrast tmguished men. They are three chiefs of tribes in sent to kppr> ordpr in this trp- 

With Othpr rnntinPnts Afrirn ?/ ltish East Africa As there are several million of bent 10 ^eporaer in tniS tre 

witu uuiei comments, Airica these natives it would make us feel a little easier, if mendoUS Wilderness. 

has an exceedingly small area actu £- ly , f t ce to face with them to see that But -c i n _. w „ v 

r 1 j a i , one °* these chiefs has a tuft of wool on the end of his DUl u we tiOIl L lose Olir way 

ot low ground. Almost every- spear; for that means that all three of them are at and the water holds out we shall 

W . wa ^ s great e ’ an so ’ 0 course > 416 eir peope - p asg through the desert and the 

tablelands rise abruptly a short distance from the sea. 


The coastal strip between is usually barren and filled 
with brackish mangrove swamps. Early explorers 
found that the few great streams which succeed in 
breaking through these coast walls are almost invari¬ 
ably closed by sandbars at their mouths, while their 
courses higher up are interrupted by rapids and 
cataracts, which made travel even in small boats 
next to impossible. 

But these obstacles, forbidding as they appear, are 
only the defenses of the outer gates. Turn your back 
to the Atlas Mountains in the northwest and to the 
site of ancient Carthage on the bay southeast of Cape 
Blanc, or leave the ruins of the old Greek settlement 
of Cyrene on the promontory east of the Gulf of 
Sidra, and travel southward. Before many miles, 
the rocky hills smooth out into rolling sand dunes 
stretching endlessly toward the horizon. Trees and 
vegetation disappear. The heat grows intense, pour¬ 
ing down from above, then rising again in shimmering 
waves from the burning ground. This is the beginning 
of the Great Sahara, which for ages turned back the 
tide of civilization approaching from the north. * 


steppes into a greener land beyond where the real 
Africa of the Africans begins—that central plateau 
and forest region which stood out to the last against 
the explorer, the scientist, the missionary, and the 
soldier. Here is the home of the hundreds of negro 
tribes, which shade off in the north into Arab and 
Egyptian, and in the south into Hottentot and 
Bushman. 

The Western Gates to the Continent 
It would perhaps be better to enter this region from 
the west, in the footsteps of the first explorers, for the 
sinister desert route is not the best way into the heart 
of Africa. Let us land, then, on the Guinea Coast, the 
Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, or the Congo coast— 
those western shores whose romantic names conceal 
a history of cruelty, suffering, sacrifice, disease, and 
death, unparalleled perhaps in the world. It was 
here that the ranks of American slaves were re¬ 
cruited, and here also that the early missionaries 
tried to win back the confidence of the savages, so 
sadly abused by their unscrupulous white “brothers.” 
Here for nearly 100 years the fierce negro warriors of 
the Ashanti kingdom successfully resisted the British. 


contained in the Easy Reference F a c t -1 n’d e x at the end of this work 

33 








AFRICA 


Peoplej 


Wild Animals and Wild 


And it was in this region that the dread African fever 
carried off such an enormous number of victims that 
the west coast became known throughout the world 
as the “white man’s grave.” 

Two great rivers water this region, the Niger and the 
giant Congo. The latter is the largest river in Africa, 
and next to the Amazon the largest in the world if 
we count the volume of water 
that it pours into the ocean. 

The country drained by 
these rivers is not unlike the 
tropical forest region of South 
America, except that it is 
somewhat higher and far more 
densely inhabited. Crossed by 
the Equator, it is marked by 
fierce heat and tremendous 
rains, which together produce 
for hundreds of miles a tangle 
of trees and vegetation so 
thick that it can be crossed 
only over the narrow foot¬ 
paths, beaten by the naked 
feet of savages for hundreds 
of years. 

The elephant and the hip- 


capes. About 200 miles from the coast and 200 miles 
south of the Equator, the peak of Kilimanjaro soars 
19,720 feet, the highest mountain in Africa, on whose 
broad sides dwell more than 200 independent tribes. 

Mountains in equatorial Africa have the peculiar 
habit of rising suddenly out of the ground without 
the assistance of many foot-hills. They do not run 
in great ranges, but seem to 
have been thrown up sepa¬ 
rately, while between them are 
wide stretches of high prairie 
or plateau land, called in cen¬ 
tral Africa “savannas” and 
in the south the “veldt.” 
These prairies are usually 
rocky, dotted with woods, and 
covered with brush and tall 
grasses, and are the favorite 
home of African big game. 

The Sudan and Lake Chad 
Look again at the map. The 
African savanna region 
stretches from the Senegal 
River on the extreme west 
coast directly eastward to the 
headwaters of the Nile, includ- 


FORTY MILES FOR TWENTY CENTS! 



popotamus are able to force 
their way through this jungle, 
but few other large animals 
venture here. However, the 
giant trees, interlaced with 
huge creepers and vines, form 
the natural home of the chim¬ 
panzee and the great gorilla, 
who build their nests in the thick foliage. Countless 
other varieties of monkeys chatter in the tree tops, 
dining on wild fruit and nuts, rarely descending to 
the ground except for water. Innumerable parrots 
and other birds of bright plumage dwell here, while 
insects find it a paradise. Africa, having comparative¬ 
ly few poisonous snakes, is said to have more varieties 
of scorpions, centipedes, spiders, ants, and other such 
creatures which bite and sting, than any other part 
of the globe. Worst of all is the tsetse fly, whose bite 
is fatal to cattle, horses, and dogs, and which spreads 
the fatal “sleeping sickness” that kills thousands of 
natives and scores of white men every year. 

This vast region of woods is inhabited by number¬ 
less fragments of tribes, usually at war with each 
other, who live apart from 10 to 50 miles in clearings. 
There they grow the plantains, bananas, beans, to¬ 
bacco, gourds, melons, etc., on which they live. 

The Eastern Coast 

Turning to the east coast we find different con¬ 
ditions. Although fever infests the shore line here 
also, the land rises to greater heights, usually affording 
quicker relief from the tropical heat. In fact it is 
on the east side of Africa that the chief mountains of 
1 he continent are massed, running parallel to the shore 
line from the Red Sea in the north to the southern 


If you want to send a letter, in certain parts of Africa, i^§ the Sudan and forming 
you don’t drop it into a mail box. You hand it to a young the northern boundary of the 
native like this one. He fastens it in the fork of a stick . . , ,. 

so that he won’t forget it and so that the other natives will great forests and the Southern 
not interfere with him; for they know if they do they will u n „ n j or ,. <j 0 i, oro T+ 

get themselves into trouble with their British rulers. Then, boundary Ot the tealiara. It 
with a spear in the other hand to defend himself from any then turns Southward, takes 
wild animals that may attack him, he starts off at a jogging . , . . ’ 

trot which will carry your letter some forty miles a day. in the territory OI the great 
For this service he wdU^chMge^you^the^equivalent of twenty then back to the west 

coast again, encircling the 
forests, while a broad spur stretches toward the 
southeast shores. This is the land of the lion, the 
leopard, the hyena and its relative the aard-wolf or 
earth wolf, the rhinoceros, the buffalo, the zebra, 
the wild boar, the giraffe and his strange cousin 
the okapi, the ostrich, the hartbeest, and scores of 
other antelopes and gazelles. Here also grows the 
gigantic baobab or monkey-bread tree, and the tall 
elephant grass. 

The tribes which inhabit this region, usually 
grouping themselves about the more thickly wooded 
mountain slopes or highlands, have generally reached 
a higher degree of civilization than their forest 
neighbors. They are organized into larger and more 
powerful tribes, and it is their warlike character, 
rather than the nature of the country itself, which has 
proved an obstacle to the white man in this portion 
of Africa. 

Before turning southward let us visit the famous 
African lakes. Perhaps the strangest of all is lonely 
Lake Chad, slowly drying up on the southern boun¬ 
daries of the Sahara. At high water, when the Shari 
and Yo rivers bring their floods from the south and 
west, Lake Chad is about 150 miles long, but never 
more than 20 or 25 feet deep. The lake is stocked 
with fish, water-fowl, turtles of enormous size, and 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


34 


place 


see information 






SOCIETY NOTES FROM DARKEST AFRICA 



Y°u Ca n see that all the people in this picture page are pretty much dressed up—all except the gentleman in the uoper left-hand corner 
but hebelongs to the “smart set” too as he means to show you by his teeth. You might suppose he had been neglecting the dentfst but 
it s just the other way around; his teeth have been filed that way on purpose. Teeth like that are the mark of a gentleman in the unc vi ized 
Sudan. Not many years ago these natives were cannibals and ate human flesh. The Bantu tribes vary the fashion by filing the lower teeth 
The markings on the face of the woman in the center are not only supposed to make her beautiful, but show to which tribe she belong 
The brass or copper wire and rings she wears weigh from forty to sixty pounds. Notice also the “close up” of the head and shoulders of 
tne same woman. 


When the lady in the lower left-hand picture gets through dressing the other lady’s hair it will stand out straight in the back iust as hers 
does. This is accomplished by putting a wad of wool in the center and then binding the kinky hair very tightly around it. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

35 



































AFRICA 


First White Settlement 


NATIVE BLACKSMITH AT WORK 


crocodiles, while the surrounding country is filled with 
game. Each year sees the desert encroaching a little 
bit more. 

The Great Lakes Region 

The other big African lakes form a group running 
north and south along the “Great Rift valley” or 
continental trough formed by the East Coast high¬ 
lands. The greatest of these lakes is Victoria Nyanza 
(nyanza means “lake”), the principal feeder of the 
Nile River; it measures 230 
miles at the widest point 
and, next to Lake Supe¬ 
rior, is the largest body of 
fresh water on the globe. 

The Kagera River, the 
ultimate headstream of the 
whole Nile system, flows 
into it. Lake Victoria in 
turn flows into Albert 
Nyanza to the northwest, 
a lake about 100 miles in Africa the village blacksmith doesn’t stand, as he does in zi, lies the Kalahari desert, 
long and 20 broad, which S. “U'fwb! 5,' £Xn. „Wi°n £17 a stretch of waste land 



of Good Hope by Bartholomew Diaz in 1488, and 
the successful voyage to India of Vasco da Gama in 
1497-98. This achievement led a century and a half 
later to the Dutch settlement of Cape Town, in 1652, 
the first permanent colony in South Africa. 

Traveling northward from the Cape of Good Hope, 
the country shows a strange resemblance to the Airica 
of the Mediterranean. The Nieuwvelt Mountains, 
the Great Karoo highlands, and farther to the east 
the Drakensberg range, 
rise quickly from the coast, 
attaining an altitude from 
2,000 to 10,000 feet. 
Passing through the high 
interior plateau or veldt, 
we reach the Orange Riv¬ 
er, the only large stream 
in lower South Africa. 
Beyond the Orange River, 
and midway to the Zambe- 


receives also, through the 
Semliki River, the waters of Albert Edward Nyanza, 
100 miles farther south; the latter is about 40 miles in 
diameter. 

Between Lake Albert and Lake Albert Edward, and 
east of the Semliki River, appear the snow-clad peaks 
of Ruwenzori, the famous “Mountains of the Moon,” 
whose rumored existence gave rise many centuries 
ago to strange myths (see Nile River). 

Directly south of Lake Albert Edward, the great 
Kirunga volcano with its mile-wide fiery crater 
divides the lakes which flow into the Nile from those 
which feed the Congo and Zambezi rivers. Greatest 
of these is Lake Tanganyika, the longest lake in the 
world, measuring 400 miles, which at high water flows 
into the Congo through the Lukuga River. Of the 
Zambezi lakes, Nyasa is the most noteworthy, for, 
besides being 340 miles long, it reaches in spots the 
extraordinary depth of 2,600 feet. Here must be 
mentioned the famous Victoria Falls of the Zambezi, 
nearly 400 feet high and a mile wide, one of the 
greatest cataracts in the world. 

From Herodotus to Da Gama 

Let us now approach South Africa by way of the 
sea. Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th 
century before Christ, relates that 100 years before 
his time Phoenician navigators in the employ of 
King Necho of Egypt sailed around Africa, hugging 
the coast from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. 
If anything was learned on this early journey it was 
quickly forgotten, for map makers for 2,000 years 
afterward showed the continent ending at the 
“Mountains of the Moon.” A new era dawned, how¬ 
ever, when early in the 15th century Prince Henry 
of Portugal, called “The Navigator,” devoted himself 
to finding a sea route to the East around the African 
coasts. His untiring efforts, carried forward after his 
death by others, led at last to the rounding of the Cape 


about 600 miles in diameter, 
which in heat and barrenness is a small counterpart 
of the Sahara. 

Fierce Natives Delayed Settlement 
The animal inhabitants of the interior of South 
Africa do not differ greatly from those of the northern 
savannas. The native ostrich has been tamed to a 
large extent for the sake of its valuable feathers. The 
chief wealth of this region lies in its great diamond 
fields, centering at Kimberley, and its gold mines in 
the Johannesburg district, and farther north in 
Rhodesia. How these affected the history of this 
country is told elsewhere (see South Africa). 

Together with the rugged nature of this territory, 
the fierce character of the natives delayed peaceful 
settlement. The Hottentots along the southwest 
coast were friendly enough, but the dwarf Bushmen 
beyond the mountains inspired terror in the later 
settlers, killing many with their poisoned arrows, and 
generally winning a reputation for great cruelty. 

But the most formidable obstacle was raised by the 
powerful and highly organized Zulu-Kaffir state to 
the northeast. The Zulus, who form a branch of the 
great Kaffir family, are tall, vigorous, and intelligent. 
They quickly learned the white man’s lesson, present¬ 
ing none of the child-like simplicity tound in most 
negro tribes, with the result that they not only 
opposed the settlers with arms, but were able to stir 
up political discord among the whites themselves. 
It was not until the British had been defeated in 
several fierce encounters that the power of Kin g 
Cetewayo of Zululand was broken in 1879. 

To complete the broad survey of Africa we must 
leave the continent on the east coast, sail 230 miles 
across the Mozambique channel, and land in Mada¬ 
gascar. This massive island, one of the four largest in 
the world, is 980 miles long and 350 miles across at 
its widest point. Except for its position it has little 


for a n 


y subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

36 






} The Different Races 


in common with the rest of Africa. The Malagasy 
people, chief of whom are the Hovas, appear to be 
descended in large part from Malay or Polynesian 
stock. Their history and the story of European 
colonization is told elsewhere (see Madagascar). 


AFRIcA| 

Until recent years they were often cannibals. They 
still indulge in scar-tattooing and file the teeth of the 
upper jaw into points. Their natural weapons are 
bows and arrows, and they carry wooden shields. 
Witchcraft and fetishism have a strong hold upon 


A “WALLED CITY” IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA 



“1 l°u° k m ,V c . h l‘ k .® th , e walled cities that figure so prominently in the romantic days of knighthood, does it? Yet it is a walled 
^*^° Ugh the Wal1 1S - built Inside the wall is a native village. Such fortified villages in Africa are called “kraals ” The wall 

has but one narrow opening. At night the cattle are driven inside to prevent their being killed by wild animals. The open space in the cen¬ 
ter of the village is for the cattle at night, and for cooking the family meals in the daytime. 


Estimates of the native population of Africa today 
must necessarily remain vague, but the best author¬ 
ities place the so-called blacks at 150,000,000, while 
the lighter peoples, north of the Sahara and scattered 
along the northeast coast, number about 20,000,000. 
The black population has decreased greatly since the 
advent of Europeans. The slave trade particularly 
made tremendous inroads, which may be judged by 
the fact that in North and South America alone 
there are today more than 20,000,000 people of 
African descent (see Negro; Slavery). 

The Four Great Races of Africa 

Due to the constant intermingling of tribes and 
peoples the greatest confusion of races exists, but it 
is possible to distinguish broadly four elements: 
the Bushman, the Negro, the Hamite, and the Semite. 
The Bushman, whom we have already seen in South 
Africa, although he is classed as a black has little 
relation to the negro. He is very short, and yellow 
of skin, and the shape of his skull and bones differs 
from that of his northern neighbors. The Hottentot 
is believed to be a cross between the Bushman and 
other African races. 

The negroes who inhabit the great forests and the 
central and southern plateaus may be considered the 
true Africans in race and civilization. They fall into 
two great groups—the northern or Sudan negroes, 
occupying a wide strip from the Guinea coast (some¬ 
times called Senegambia) eastward to the sources of 
the Nile; and the Bantu tribes, extending from the 
middle of the great forests downward, covering the 
southern horn of the continent. The first speak a 
great variety of distinct languages, while the Bantu 
tongues all resemble each other closely. 

The Sudan negroes are mostly farmers, raising 
plantains, yams, and manioc; they dwell in rectangular 
huts and wear bark-cloth or palm-fiber clothing. 


them, and they practice their heathen religion largely 
through secret societies. 

The Bantus, on the other hand, are cattle-breeders 
as well as farmers, drinking milk, which is virtually 
unknown to the northern negroes. They build 
round huts and wear skin and leather clothing. They 
know how to smelt iron ore and to fashion iron 
weapons. They usually carry spears and hide-covered 
shields. Cannibalism appears to have been rare 
among them. Their religion is usually a form of 
ancestor worship, which in the dry regions of the 
south is mixed up with rain-making superstitions. 
When they file their teeth they prefer to work on the 
lower jaw. 

When we leave the pure negro and go northward to 
the Mediterranean and eastward into the Nile valley 
and Abyssinia, the confusion grows, because almost 
everywhere the peoples called “Hamites” and 
“Semites” have mixed with each other, as well as 
with the negroes whom they enslaved at an early date. 
The Hamites, however, predominate. They include 
the Berbers of the Atlas region, who are of pure white 
race; the Kabyles and Tuaregs of the desert; the 
Fellahin (descendants of the ancient Egyptians); the 
Bisharin of the Red Sea coast; and the Gallas, Somalis, 
and Masai of East Africa. The Semites include, 
besides the various Arab tribes of north and northwest 
Africa, an important part of the inhabitants of 
Abyssinia. If Hamites and Semites are split racially, 
the vast majority of them are closely bound together 
by the common tie of the Mohammedan religion, the 
most powerful single influence in northern Africa 
(see Mohammed and Mohammedanism). 

The history and description of Egypt and other 
countries of north Africa is too long and involved to 
be told here in detail. For these and other im¬ 
portant states of Africa, consult the separate articles. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end 

37 


of this 


work 










| AFRICA 


England’s Entry into Africa 



In the year 1875 less than one-tenth of Africa was 
under European rule. Today the small negro republic 
of Liberia, protected by the United States, and the 
ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, whose 300,000 square 


missionary David Livingstone, who turned explorer 
and became a pioneer of trade and empire. In 1849 
he crossed the Kalahari desert from south to north, 
and began his famous series of travels which made 


WHERE HOUSES ARE BUILT LIKE GIANT HATS 



Here is a view of a Kaffir kraal or village in South Africa. These famous “mushroom” huts are woven of tall grass with as much skill and 
perfection as many a product of a civilized hat factory. The grass stems are plaited and overlaid, and reinforced with ropes of vegetable 
fiber or strips of skin. The thick walls and domed roof are wind and rain proof. The doorways, generally very low, have ornamental friezes 
cut in the dried straw which denote the social position of its occupants. These round huts are peculiar to the Bantu tribes south of the 
great forest regions. The more primitive Congo and West Coast negroes build cruder dwellings, rectangular in form, with ridged roofs. 


THE HELPING HAND 


miles are cut off entirely from the sea, are the only 
spots which have not been taken over by European 
powers. This sudden and tremendous colonial ex¬ 
pansion, sometimes called the “scramble for Africa,” 
was the result of the great political 
and economic changes which swept 
over Europe in the middle of the 19th 
century. 

The slave trade and the barter for 
ivory and gold which followed the 
Portuguese discoveries of the 15th and 
16th centuries had done little to en¬ 
courage colonization. Christianity, 
which had flourished so brightly in 
northern Africa during the early cen¬ 
turies of our era, had been swept away 
by the Mohammedan conquests of the 
7th century, leaving only slender 
traces in Abyssinia and in the Coptic 
church of Egypt. The Turks, in turn, 
had overthrown Arab rule in the 16th 
century. Nowhere, except in South 
Africa and in a few Portuguese out¬ 
posts on the east coast, had Europeans 
gained a foothold. In the 18th cen¬ 
tury Europe, engaged in constant 
warfare and busied with its own 
affairs, virtually forgot Africa. 

But in the course of the wars with Most heavy work among African natives 
, T , „ , -r, . is done by women, and here we see one 

Napoleon and his allies, Great Britain laborer helping another with her pack. 



known the great waterways of the upper Zambezi and 
the southern lakes. In 1862 J. H. Speke reached a 
stream in central Africa which he followed through 
Egypt to the sea, being thus the first white man to 
read the riddle of the Nile. Paul du 
Chaillu, in 1865, found the pigmy 
negro races in the great forests. Six 
years before he had observed for the 
first time the giant gorilla, thus con¬ 
firming the old Greek and Cartha¬ 
ginian legends about dwarf men and 
giant apes. The great hunter Fred¬ 
erick C. Selous began, in 1872, his 
20-year travels, which did more than 
anything else to clear up the mysteries 
of South Africa. 

But it remained for Henry M. 
Stanley, the great Anglo-American 
explorer, to set afire the European 
imagination with dreams of Africa. 
After a thrilling rescue of Livingstone 
in 1871, Stanley determined to explore 
the entire Congo region. Entering 
from the east coast in 1875, he 
reached the Lualaba, which had been 
mistaken by Livingstone for a branch 
of the Nile, and followed the river to 
the Atlantic Ocean on the west in 
1877, proving it to be the Congo. 

Two events of the greatest impor¬ 
tance to Africa’s future had taken 


do 

has 


took possession of the Dutch colonies ^ work* “em ungafiant.Tt 11 ; 

at the Cape of Good Hope, and the comes^mor’e^m“cSfa? thS? hJr* idle place in 1869 - The Suez canal had 

been opened, and diamonds had been 
found in South Africa at the junction 
of the Vaal and Orange rivers. These events, 
coupled with Stanley’s great achievement, whetted 
the appetites of the manufacturing and trading 
classes of Europe. 


slow awakening began. By agree- husband, and rules her household by 
ment of the powers in 1836, the slave the r,ght of might ‘ 

trade was abolished, and the period of great explora¬ 
tion opened. 

Passing over Mungo Park, James Bruce, and many 
other great names of earlier days, we come to the 


F or any subject not found in its alphabetical place see i nf or 

38 


motion 






THE HAND OF CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA 



The pictures on this page give a good idea of what civilization and the white man have done for Africa. For one thing they have put 
the fierce native Zulu in a policeman’s uniform and set him to keeping law and order, instead of stirring up trouble as the Zulus used to 
do. Like an American policeman he carries a stick, which is used on those who refuse to obey. You will notice, however, that it has a 
heavy ball on the end of it. The native skulls are very hard and thick and the ordinary locust stick would make little impression on them. 

This policeman belongs in Durban, one of the prosperous towns in Natal, South Africa. So does the rickshaw runner. The runner 
wears the horns as ornaments. The men who do this work are between 18 and 20 years of age and go from 20 to 30 miles a day. 

Just above the runner is a picture of the native quarters of Mombasa in British East Africa and above, to the right, is a view in the residence 
portion of Zanzibar; while in the lower left-hand corner is shown one of the business streets. The beautiful view of Cape Town and Table 
Bay was taken from an airplane. Cape Town is a very modern city, as you can see by the view on Adderly Street. 

The city is built upon a plain flanked on every side, except the bay, by mountains. Behind the city to the south is Table Mountain, over 
three thousand feet high, and extending for a distance of two miles. You can see it here as you look up Adderly Street. On Adderly Street 
are the custom house and railway station, and the post and telegraph office. In Cape Town, as in England, the government takes charge of 
your telegraph messages as well as your letters. The suburbs of Cape Town are famous the world over for their beauty, standing as they do 
in a kind of amphitheater overlooking the broad plain on which the city is built. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

39 





































AFRICA 


Rich Land of Promise 


River, a slice of the Congo region called Cameroon, 
and a thin strip on the Gold Coast named Togoland. 
During the World War, however, these possessions 
were taken over by England, France, Belgium, and 
Portugal and redistributed. 

The detailed political divisions of Africa at the 
present day are shown on the accompanying map. 
Under European guidance the immense resources 

WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES IN DARKEST AFRICA 


Leopold II, king of Belgium, a shrewd business 
man, fired the gun which started the race for Africa, 
when he made known his personal project to form 
the Congo Free State and exploit the wealth of the 
great forest region. 

The Scramble for African Territory 

Germany, united and aggressive after its victory 
in the Franco-Prussian war, felt a need for colonies 
and leaped into Africa as the only open¬ 
ing left. Great Britain, already in control 
of South Africa, and France, in possession 
since 1830 of Algeria, were roused to their 
opportunities elsewhere on the continent. 

Portugal, stirred from her lethargy, began to 
polish up ancient claims. The big scramble 
was on. 

King Leopold and the French clashed in 
the Congo. Germany blocked England in 
East Africa. England blocked France in 
the Sudan. Portugal obtained England’s 
support for her claims at the mouth of the 
Congo, bringing a loud chorus of protests 
from France, Germany, and King Leopold. 

Italy seized the Red Sea coast of Abyssinia. 

Every nation involved was sending into 
the interior messengers armed with blank 
treaty forms, which they induced native 
chiefs to sign. Many of these chiefs signed 
cheerfully for every one who came along. 

Indescribable confusion soon reigned. 

To put an end to the uncertainty, a con¬ 
ference of the powers was called in Berlin, 
in 1884, which laid down rules under which 
annexations should be valid. It was agreed 

that each nation should notify other nations The portions of Africa settled by white people are shown in the accompanying 

nf tVipir nrnWts for colonization outlining ma P- The regions most densely populated are indicated in black and the more 
01 tneir projects ior colonization, outlining sparsely settled regions in the lighter shading. In many cases the portions 

the territories for which they intended to be indicated as being less densely settled are mere trading or missionary stations. 

... , , i c ■ In the regions indicated by white spaces no white people live at all, and in the 

responsible and Where their sphere OI in- desert regions neither whites nor blacks, except where there are oases. 

fluence” was to extend. 

of Africa are being rapidly developed, and the natives 
are slowly being trained to civilized life. Always 
rich in jungle products, such as india rubber, palm 
oil, teakwood, ebony, mahogany, gum arabic, etc., 
the land is growing more fertile under the plow. 
The cultivated products include cotton, coffee, 
copra, corn, wheat, sugar cane, rice, tea, tobacco, 
indigo, fruits, cloves, and drug-yielding plants. The 
climate of Africa offers every extreme from the 
drought of the Sahara, where there is virtually no 
rain, to the Congo coast where 390 inches fall an¬ 
nually; and from the cold of the mountains to the 
heat of the central forests; so there is virtually no 
tree or plant which cannot find a home in its soil. 
Africa’s Promising Future 
Agriculture is being pushed, especially on the great 
savannas, and, wherever the tsetse fly can be ex¬ 
terminated, European breeds of cattle are being 
imported and raised. 

Africa is of course rich in animal resources. Ivory 
is still the most important of these, although the 



The next 15 years saw the main partition of Africa 
concluded after war had several times been narrowly 
averted. France obtained control of northwest 
Africa and the north bank of the Congo, as well as 
the island of Madagascar. England clung to Egypt 
(where she had been forced to intervene in 1882), 
consolidated her possessions in South Africa, opened 
a large new colony in East Africa, and established 
herself at the mouth of the Niger River. Leopold 
took over the great Congo basin as the Congo Free 
State (transferred to Belgium as a colony in 1908). 
Portugal retained Angola in the west and Mozam¬ 
bique in the east. Italy, after a disastrous defeat by 
the Abyssinian forces, held a small strip on the Red 
Sea and a large slice of Somaliland; to these Tripoli 
was added after a war with Turkey in 1911-12. 

Germany succeeded for a time in defeating Eng¬ 
land’s desire for an all-British strip from Cape Town 
to Cairo by thrusting in a broad wedge in East 
Africa. The Berlin government also obtained a large 
section of southwest Africa, north of the Orange 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

40 















THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT AFRICA 



Strait of | 
Gibraltar 


Irregular rainfall . 
moat in spring 


Libyan 

desert 


Lake Chad 


3y.TB.rrur 


Two rainy seasons. early 
^Thimmer/Und autumn 


torn a 


Gulf of Guinea 


■Rainy season 
Dee.Jan. 


HEIGHTS and 
DEPTHS 

■ over 10000 ft. 

<0000 

5000 

2000 

- 1000 

—— Sea Level 

- 500 

- 5000 

B ” 20000 

over 2<XXlO 


RAINFALL in Inches 


WEB over 80 
mmm io-8o 
1^^20-iO 
l~" "I ’0-20 
I 1 0-/0 


Srraif ofGxbraltar 

ir.ri.rr. 


Sf raif of 
Gibraltar 


C*iro| 
E G Y F 


ALGERIA 


’/ re 

fteppes 


(OUS y Stepp'? 


. Timbuktu 

FRENCH^ 


Khartum 


ABYSSINIA 


Freetown 


Gulf of Guinea 


Gulf of Guinea 


^Zanzibar 

[Du es Salaam 


NT.OLA 


UNION OF 


SOUTH AFRICA^ 


jptrt woodbind 


Pretoria 


POPULATION perSq-Mxle 


VEGETATION 


HHH Over 
■■ 64-128 
pfaasMi te-ei 

— i.s-es 

l 1 :Under Z.5 


\ Forest Regions \ 

I Woodland, Grass and Cultivation 
I Prairies, Steppes and Savannas 
Desert Regions 


The development of every country is largely due to natural conditions. The most important of these.natural,p. 0 ^ 0 ^ 

and rainfall _are shown in the first two of these four maps of the great continent of Africa. In the next two are presentea me iacrs 

wkh regard to vegem.on and densitTof population, which are largely the result of the climate and physiography of the country. 






































Of-BIScA 


CORSIC- 


BALEARIC 


[ICILY 


CYPRU! 


MALTA 


>/Sfax 
/Q.of Gate* 
kpabes _ . 
H T ripoli 


[Suez Canal 


canary » 

0 lSp .) 

• « * 


Khargap 
1st Cataract 


•Assui 


TROPIC OF 


2nd \ _ 
"Cataract 


Insala 


.Wady Haifa 


Port Sudden 


luakin 


WEST AFRICA 

Timbuktu “—v 


Khartum 


GYP 

El Obeid 


Sinder 


SOKOTRA 


'ana 


Kukal 


Kano 


Bauchi 


BiSSASoX 

!KonakryV 

jFreetowir£ 

SIERRA LEI 


“ Berbers 

— J“*T “BRITISH 

HararVsoM*u^*i> 


Zungeru 


Adis Abeba 

rv AB Y S £ 


GOLD 

COAST 


Abbe 


Monrovia 


JAMEROO: 


C. Palmas 


FERNANDO PCX U 
(Sp .) \) 

Bight of Biafra' 
EA prince 1/ Bataf 
(Port.) 

ST. THOMASq_ff 


SOT SL. Rudolf \ 

^KENYA 

Port Florence 


r akua R. 

Albert Nyanzt 


GULF OF 


idisho 


Entebbe, 


Stanleyvill* 


(flwtil 


Libreville 


OLONY 

ij Nairobi / 


quilhatville 

3 E L GV 

Leopold II Ki » 


'ilimanj 


[Mombasa 

para 

PEMBA I. 

'Zanzibar 
►ar-es-Salaam 


aville- 


KabindaT;"^' 


__XT* r> l f )frus \ 

TANGANYIKA 
v territory 


Leopoldvill 


tville’ 


Loanda 


Malan; 


imfinfl 


Lobito Bam 


^COMORO is, 


L.Nyasa 


A ST.HELENA I, 

(Br.) 


Livingstone 


QuiJIm! 


Victoria 

Falls\ 


southwest! 


Otavi 


iulawayo. 


1 W indhuk 

Jafhiica 

S (Brinish 
( Maiudate) 


• Francistown/ 1 ^-. 

n ecii itaa aland V, 


Swakopmundv 

WALFI8C11 day' 


Tullearj 


Angra Pcquena> 


0bzz Qo nZ m ^r 


'Angara 


UNION, 

K^mberlev 


Port Nolloth 


pjetermaritzbi 

Durban 


SOUT 

VCAlPE OR 


St.Helena Boy) 
Cape Town' 
c. of Good Hope' 


><East London 
ahamstown 


>Q rt Elizabeth 


» MADEIRA 

(Port.) 






EQUATOR 


ASCENSION I. 

° (Br.) 


TROP'5-^ F -t''-' 


{British Mandate) H MAF,A *• 

L M/oero^V\ aldabra is. 


AFRICA 


SCALE OF MILES 

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 


C.S. HAMMOND & CO.,N.Y. 


EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS 



Groat 

Britain 



France 



Belgium 



Italy 

Spain 

Portugal 


British 


French 


Formerly 

German 


A. Long. 10° West 13 


C2 Long. 10° EastX) from 20 o Green^Ej 

















































































































































* 




































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Africa’s Wealth in Minerals 


AGASSIZ 



elephant herds have been practically exterminated 
near the settlements. The supply of skins, wool, 
and hair, ostrich feathers, etc., continues large. 

The immediate future of Africa lies, however, in its 
mineral products. Twenty-five per cent of the world’s 
gold is mined there, and 80 per cent of the world’s 
diamonds. Tremendous copper fields exist in South 
Africa and in the south Congo basin. Many of the 
colonies are already developing coal fields sufficient 
for their own use, while the supply of iron ore is 
apparently limitless. Petroleum is found in Somali¬ 
land and Egypt, tin in the Niger valley, lead and silver 
in Morocco. 

Transportation facilities are rapidly developing. 
Although there are only four streams—the Nile, the 
Congo, the Niger, and the Zambezi—which offer 
really good facilities for inland navigation, these are 
of immense importance. On all the great lakes 
steamers have been carried overland and launched. 

Lions Still Roar as Trains Flash By 

The French and British are particularly active in 
extending the railway systems. One may take a sleep¬ 
ing car in Cape Town and wake up some morning in 
the Belgian Congo. On the famous Uganda Railway 
from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, travelers can lie 
in their berths and occasionally hear the lions roar, 
as they stop at night at some wayside station, and 
during the day the long neck of a giraffe may some¬ 
times be seen craning from the bushes toward the 
“iron horse.” The Nile rail system is gradually ex¬ 
tending south of Khartum to meet the railway from 
South Africa, and thus complete the Cape-to-Cairo 
route dreamed of by Cecil Rhodes (see Rhodes, Cecil). 
From the network of railways in Algeria and Morocco, 
the French are projecting lines across the desert to 
link up with those in Senegal, Dahomey, and British 
Nigeria. The Portuguese have completed more than 
half of a railroad to link their east and west coast 
possessions. The telegraph clicks and the wireless 
sputters in the great forests where Livingstone and 
Stanley so often lost their way; and French, Italian, 
and British airplanes soar above the burning sands of 
the Sahara, carrying mail to distant outposts. 

Finally, schools and factories are springing up side 
by side. Tribal wars are rapidly becoming a thing 
of the past. The natives are becoming peaceful 
traders and farmers and are even in some sections 
winning the right to vote. The day of the savage 
is indeed ended in Africa. 


For additional information see the following articles: 


Abyssinia 
Alexandria 
Algeria 
Boer War 
Cairo 

Cape of Good Hope 
Cape Town 
Congo River 
Congo State 
Diamond 
East Africa 


Egypt 

Gold 

Ivory 

Johannesburg 

Liberia 

Livingstone, David 
Madagascar 
Morocco 
Niger River 
Nile River 
Rhodes, Cecil 


Sahara 

South Africa 

Stanley, Sir Henry 

Tanganyika, Lake 

Tripoli 

Tunis 

Victoria Falls 
Victoria Nyanza 
Zambezi River 
Zanzibar 


Agassiz ( dg'a-s'i ), Louis Jean Rodolphe (1807- 
1873). At the age of 21 this celebrated naturalist 
wrote to his father: “I wish it may be said of Louis 
Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time, a 
good citizen, and a good son, beloved of those who 
knew him.” All this and more came true. He 
became not only the greatest authority of his day on 

zoology and geol¬ 
ogy, but a great 
teacher and leader, 
who had the power 
of inspiring other 
men with his en- 
thusiasm for 
science. His sunny 
disposition and his 
great-hearted 
sympathy and 
generosity en¬ 
deared him to all 
those who came 
close to him; and 
his is among the 
most distinguished 
names in both 
Switzerland, his 
native country, 
and America, the land of his adoption. 

The Boy Foreshadows the Man 
The son of a pastor, Louis Agassiz was born in the 
little Swiss village of Motiers, not far from Lake 
Neuchatel. As a boy he loved birds and beasts, 
fishes and insects, and delighted in collecting speci¬ 
mens and searching for new creatures. He studied 
medicine at the universities of Zurich, Heidelberg, and 
Munich. But his greatest enthusiasm was for 
zoology, and he welcomed the opportunity to devote 
himself to this pursuit, when in 1829 he was invited 
by a well-known naturalist to edit a work on Brazilian 
fishes. This was followed by an extended investiga¬ 
tion of European fishes, in which he studied not only 
the living specimens, but the fossil fishes preserved in 
the rocks; and this in turn led to an interest in 
geology. He spent a summer in a hut on the edge 
of a glacier, where, in the midst of dangers and pri¬ 
vations, he studied its action. His subsequent 
studies along this line helped to establish the theory, 
now universally accepted, that at different times the 
greater part of Europe was covered by these vast 
sheets of ice. 

Agassiz had become professor of natural history at 
Neuchatel in 1832 and remained there until 1846, 
when he came to America to deliver a series of lec¬ 
tures in Boston. The following year he accepted the 
chair of zoology and geology at Harvard University. 
The ties which he formed in America and the oppor¬ 
tunities offered for scientific research led him to 
refuse tempting offers to return to Europe, and to 
remain here until the end of his life. In addition 
to teaching he did considerable writing, delivered 



contained in the E a ty 


Reference Fact-Index 


41 


a t 


the 


end of this 


work 












AGASSIZ 


AGINCOURT 


popular lectures on scientific sub¬ 
jects, and engaged in scientific ex¬ 
peditions in various parts of the 
United States and Brazil. He was 
the founder of the great Museum of 
Natural History at Harvard, now 
famous as the Agassiz Museum. 

When urged to turn to financial 
profit his great scientific knowledge, 
he impatiently replied that he “had 
no time to make money.” 

Studying Science from 
Nature’s Books 

A few months before his death, 

Agassiz carried out a long-cherished 
idea in establishing a summer school 
of science on the island of Penikese, 
in Buzzard’s Bay, off the southeast 
coast of Massachusetts. This was 
the first school for studying science 
directly from specimens and in close 
contact with nature. It made vital 
and attractive the study of natural 
science, and through the young men 
who there gained inspiration, he 
helped to lift science teaching to a 
higher plane. 

Agassiz died at Cambridge in 1873, 
and on his grave were placed a 
bowlder that came from the glacier 
near the spot where his hut once 
stood, and pine trees sent from his 
old home in Switzerland. ‘ 1 The land 
of his birth and the land of his 
adoption are united in his grave.” 

His son Alexander (1835-1910), 
also a distinguished naturalist and writer, was, from 
1874 to 1897, chief curator of the museum of com¬ 
parative zoology which his father had founded. 

Louis Agassiz’s most important American publications 
are: ‘Methods of Study in Natural History’; ‘Geological 
Sketches’; ‘The Structure of Animal Life’; ‘A Journey in 
Brazil’ (with his wife, Elizabeth Agassiz); ‘Contributions 
to the Natural History of the United States’ (only four 
volumes of the ten planned were completed). 

Agave (a-gd've). The best known species of this 
remarkable and beautiful family of plants, the 
American aloe, is commonly known as the century 
plant, through a mistaken idea that it blooms only 
when it has reached the age of 100 years. As a 
matter of fact the time of blooming depends entirely 
upon the vigor of the individual plant and the con¬ 
ditions under which it is grown. In warm countries 
where the growth is rapid, flowers appear in a few 
years, while in colder climates the plant sometimes 
requires from 40 to 60 years to reach maturity. 

Various Uses of the Century Plant 

A native of Mexico and Central America, the 
century plant is widely cultivated for ornamental 
purposes, and in Spain, Portugal, and Italy is often 

For any subject not found in its 


used as a fence. The leaves— 
thick, fleshy, and spiny-toothed— 
form a sort of rosette from the center 
of which springs, at the time of 
flowering, a tall branched stem with 
erect greenish-yellow clustered blos¬ 
soms. When the plant has flowered 
the leaves die down, but suckers are 
frequently produced from the base of 
the stem which become new plants. 

The American aloe and numerous 
other species of agave are very useful 
plants in Mexico, where they are 
grown as a regular farm crop. The 
sap when fermented produces the 
national beverage, 'pulque , and dis¬ 
tilled it forms a spirit called mescal. 
The leaves are used as fodder, and 
rope, cord, bagging, and matting 
are manufactured from their fiber. 
One variety yields the sisal hemp of 
commerce. The juice of the leaves 
will lather in water, like soap, and is 
much used in washing. 

Scientific name of American aloe, 
Agave americana. Leaf-stem stout and 
short. Leaves long, thick, pointed, with 
spiny margin; in them is stored nourish¬ 
ment for the effort of flowering. Flower- 
stem often 20 feet or more in height, 
much branched. Flowers erect, clus¬ 
tered; tube of corolla narrowed in the 
middle; stamens extending beyond 
corolla. 

AGINCOURT ( a-zhan-koor '). The 
third great victory of the English 
over the French in the Hundred 
Years’ War was won Oct. 25, 1415, 
at the village of Agincourt in northern France. The 
young king, Henry V, had recently succeeded his 
father, Henry IV, on the insecure Lancastrian throne 
of England, and resolved (as Shakespeare phrases it) 
“to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” by 
reviving the English claim to the French throne. 
Landing in Normandy, he found his way blocked by 
a great French army 20 miles northeast of Cr6cy, the 
scene of the first great triumph. The French knights, 
who were four times as numerous as the English— 
mainly foot soldiers—foolishly dismounted and 
advanced in their heavy armor through the deep 
mud of the newly plowed fields. Three times they 
came on, in the narrow defile between two woods, 
and three times the clouds of arrows let fly by the 
skilled English archers forced them to retire. The 
defeat turned into a rout. More than 10,000 French 
were killed, including many princes and nobles, while 
the English lost only a few hundred. This decisive 
defeat, with Crecy and Poitiers, proved the superi¬ 
ority of the English longbowmen over the crossbow¬ 
men and paved the way for the overthrow of the 
dominance of the armored knight, which was the mili¬ 
tary basis of feudalism. {See Hundred Years’ War.) 

alphabetical place sec information 


A CENTURY PLANT IN BLOOM 





This picture shows the agave or 
century plant in bloom. The flower 
shoot grows to a height of 30 feet with 
side branches and bearing the flower 
clusters as shown. As you see by the 
article, the agave has almost as many 
uses as it has flowers. 








Biggest of Big Businesses 


AGRICULTURE 


How the 

A GRICULTURE. The 

farmer is a modern 
Atlas, bearing the world 
on his shoulders. To him 
we all look for our daily 
bread. If he were to lay 
down his burden, all 
other industries would 
stop and mankind would 
go back to primitive con¬ 
ditions. 

Once upon a time, 
many thousands of years 
ago, there were no 
farmers. Men depended 
upon fruits and nuts, fish 
and game, and other 
foods they could get 
without cultivation. 

Famine was their most dreaded enemy, for the wild 
foods often failed. Men wandered from place to place 
in search of food and fought with their neighbors for 
a share when it was found. There were no settled 
communities, and so there was little opportunity for 
progress of any kind. But when at last men learned 
to care for flocks and herds, and plant seeds, food 
became more abundant and life became easier. Com¬ 
munities sprang up in which some of the workers 
provided food for all, while the other workers applied 
themselves to various handicrafts, trades, and arts. 
From such a division of labor, based on agriculture, 
have grown all the many activities that make up 
modern civilized life—the trade and commerce of the 
world, its arts and sciences, and the wonderful in¬ 
dustrial life of this 20th century. 

But though agriculture has been practiced since 
the late Stone Age, more progress has been made in 
the last two centuries than in all the thousands of 
years preceding. If a farmer of the days when George 
Washington was a boy could come to life and visit 
an up-to-date farm of today, he would be as astonished 
by the changes wrought in the past two centuries as 
if he had discovered a new world. 

From Crooked Sticks to Gang Plows 

With the wonderful labor-saving inventions at his 
command, the farmer of today can cultivate a 
thousand acres as easily as Washington’s father culti¬ 
vated fifty, or the primitive husbandman cultivated 
one. A stick was the first hand tool used to scratch 
the surface of the ground before planting, and a 
forked stick, held in the ground by the plowman while 
the oxen dragged it ahead, was the first plow. Im¬ 
provement was very slow, and after thousands of 
years farmers were still using clumsy wooden hoes, 
wooden plows, and tools of similar crudeness. Not 
until the industrial revolution of the late 18th and 
early 19th centuries put keen-edged, strong, well- 

t h e Easy Reference 


FEEDS the WORLD 

shaped tools in the hands 
of the farmer was any 
great advance made. 

But the period of 
greatest progress has 
been since 1850, when 
American ingenuity has 
devised complicated ma¬ 
chines for saving human 
labor in virtually every 
farm operation. What 
a contrast between the 
crooked stick with which 
the ancient Egyptians 
plowed, and the modern 
gang plow, turning 10 to 
20 furrows at a time, 
drawn by a powerful 
tractor! And following 
the gang plow across our fields come drags and disk 
harrows—also in gangs—and seeders and corn planters. 

In the growing season the walking cultivators and 
sulky cultivators greatly lessen the labor of the 
“man with the hoe.” Later in the year, mowers, 
hay tedders, hay rakes, and hay loaders go to the 
hay fields; and the hay fork stores the crop away in 
the barn or the hay press bales it for storage and 
shipment. To the corn fields go the corn cutters and 
binders; and husking machines, stalk cutters, and 
ensilage cutters prepare the crop for winter feeding. 
And to the grain fields go the reapers, binders, or 
harvesting machines, instead of an army of laborers 
with sickles or cradles. The modern threshing ma¬ 
chine with a few laborers accomplishes in two or 
three days work which took all winter on the threshing 
floor with the hand flail. 

How One Man Does the Work of Twenty 

To show what these astonishing machines mean to 
the farmer, experts have calculated that the farmer 
of today can accomplish twenty times as much in his 
labor time as the farmer before the Civil War. For 
example, it takes only half an hour now to sow a 
quantity of grain that used to require ten hours. 
A job of harvesting that took nearly 47 hours can 
now be done in one hour. Corn can be planted more 
than ten times as fast and husked twenty times as 
rapidly. The mowing machine does more in one 
hour than the scythe would do in seven, and the 
potato planter multiplies the efficiency of a man with 
a hoe by eight. 

Other modern equipment for the farm includes the 
cream separator, feed grinder, manure carrier and 
spreader, circular saw, stump puller, and a score of 
others. Many of them are operated by the gasoline 
engine or tractor at a great saving of time and labor. 
Gasoline engines pump the water on the modern 
farms, and very often local electric lighting systems 
are installed. 

Fact-Index at the end of this wor k 

43 


FARMER 

TIT'HEN the roosters start crowing before daybreak 
'' on the farms of the United States, they blow the 
factory whistles for the greatest industry in the world. 
The steel industry, the oil trusts, the railroads—these 
are not “big businesses” when compared with the great 
farm factory. All the gold and silver mined since Colum¬ 
bus discovered America would not buy the farms of this 
country alone. One worker in three in the United States 
is a farmer, and there is more money invested in agri¬ 
culture than in all our great manufacturing industries 
and transportation systems combined. The value of 
the farm products evenly divided throughout the year 
would make a millionaire every half-hour of the day and 
night. And the money received for just eggs and poultry 
would pay in a year for the building of two Panama 
Canals. In the article which follows you will read some¬ 
thing of the history of this greatest of industries, from the 
days when men scratched the soil with a crooked stick 
to the present, with its tractor-drawn plows and giant 
threshing-machines. 


contained in 






The World’s Food Factory 


) AGRICULTURE 

The United States has led in both the invention and 
use of farm machinery. The great stretches of fertile 
soil opened up to settlement in this country and the 
scarcity of labor demanded labor-saving and time¬ 
saving equipment for the farm. The invention of the 


thanks to such mechanical triumphs as these that the 
American farm leads the world in production pro¬ 
portionately to the number of men employed. 
Wonders Accomplished by Breeding 
Not only the processes, but even the plants and 


HOW FARMING WAS CONDUCTED IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



Here we have a bird’s-eye diagram showing a lord’s castle and village, with its woodlands and pasture, and the “three-field system” of inter¬ 
mixed holdings. The house of a typical peasant or “villein” (whom we will call “A”) is shown in the village, with his scattered acre-strips, 
separated by unplowed turf, in two of the three fields. The lord’s “domain,” which his peasants tilled for him, was similarly scattered, as 
were also the holdings of the other peasants. Each year one of the three fields was plowed but allowed to “lie fallow” or unplanted, in 
order that the soil might recover its fertility. This wasteful system held the agriculture of Europe in its grip for a thousand years. 


cotton gin by Eli Whitney, at the close of the 18th 
century, brought increased prosperity to the farmers 
of the South. Two Americans, Charles Newbold and 
Jethro Wood, early in the 19th century invented the 
cast-iron plow, which took the place of the weak and 
cumbersome iron-tipped wooden plow of colonial days. 
After the middle of the century this was superseded 
by the chilled-steel plow invented by James Oliver. 
As the population increased, the “prairie schooner” 
and later the railroads carried the pioneers on into 
the boundless West. Vast stretches of level prairie 
land were waiting to be turned into the great grain 
fields of the world, but harvesting the crop in the 
short harvest season by hand labor was an impossibil¬ 
ity. Cyrus H. McCormick made the first successful 
reaper in 1831, and today powerful tractors draw 
gangs of three to five harvesting machines across these 
western fields, harvesting 100 acres a day with less 
labor than it takes to cover one acre by hand. It is 

For any subject not found in its 


animals of the modern farm are different from those 
of early days. From a few wild grasses, plants, and 
trees, man has obtained all of his valuable cereals, 
vegetables, and fruits; and the taming of wild fowl 
and animals has given him flocks and herds. Culti¬ 
vation and breeding continued for many centuries 
produced varieties of plants and animals very superior 
to their wild ancestors. But here, too, modern science 
has conferred incalculable benefits on the farmer, 
teaching him how to develop new varieties and to 
improve the quality of plant and animal products in a 
comparatively short period of time. 

Horses are bred, for example, either for speed or 
draft purposes. Many different breeds of cattle have 
been developed, some for better beef, others for 
greater milk production. The improved dairy cow 
will give fifteen times as much milk as the scrub cow, 
which gives barely enough to sustain one calf for a 
few weeks. The farmer is feeding hogs that will put 

alphabetical place see information 








WHY THE FARM IS THE GREATEST OF ALL FACTORIES 



The annual production 
of apples, oranpes, and 
peaches- 


one year's production of 

iron ore- plus 

A 3200,000,000 


entire yearly production 
l all of America’s oil 
1-plus-3^5i3,0Q.0,000 


The aimual&ouf- 
of poultry, 
and honey 


the annual output of auto¬ 
mobiles and farm implements-plus 
*_3550.000.000 


The live stock, su 
by the farms in 
one year A 


equals 


The yearly crop of corn 
and wheat 


the total yearly earnings of 
-America’s railroads plus 

ooo 


the yearly output of coal 
and all other mineral products 
not mentioned above 


and the remainder of 
the farmers’ yearly 
products 


r arm 


I 

1 * H 




V 













The value of the products of the farm—the great factory where our food is made—is so much greater than that of any other industry in 
the world that it is difficult for the mind to grasp the fact. In this series of pictures the leading products of the farm are shown on one 
side of huge pairs of scales, and balanced against them are the products of other great lines of industry. In the first, for example, you see 
that the apples, oranges, and peaches grown each year exceed in value the year’s production of iron ore by two hundred million dollars, 
as indicated by the two weights alongside the iron ore added to make the values balance. And so with other farm products shown on the 
different sets of scales and in the farmer’s wagon. In all these pictures the relative value of the different products is indicated by their 
size; that explains why the apple is so much bigger than the orange, the pig almost as big as the cow, the egg bigger than the hen that laid it. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his 


work 

























































| A G R 


I C U L T U R E 


Ancient and Modern Methods ( 


STILL CLINGING TO CAMELS AND THE CROOKED STICK 



The British administrators in Egypt have tried to introduce modern methods in farming, but the natives, as you can see by this 
picture, often do things in the old way. The camels hardly cling more closely to the ancient customs of camels than do these 
people of the changeless East, the Egyptians, in their way of doing everything, including the cultivation of the soil. The water in the 
background is the Nile, which annually fertilizes the fields of Egypt. The ropes on the backs of the camels are for hauling and are 
kept there so that when the farmer gets through with his plowing he won’t have to trouble himself to harness the camel for the next 
piece of work. Buffaloes are even more largely used as draft animals than camels. The plow, as you see, is the ancient crooked 
stick, sharpened to a point, which was used in the days of the Pharaohs. Only the tip is shod with iron. 


on weight much more rapidly and will produce many 
times as much bacon or lard as would the razorback 
or wild hog. Some sheep are bred especially for their 
mutton, others because of the quantity and quality 
of their wool. Hens belonging to the best-laying 
breeds produce an average of 120 eggs a year and 
prize winners have produced as high as 314 eggs 

THRESHING NEAR AN EGYPTIAN VILLAGE 



The methods of threshing among the natives in Egypt are just as 
primitive as their methods of plowing. A sledge loaded with stones 
is drawn by oxen over the wheat spread out over the ground, so 
crushing out the grains. Boys about twelve years old, like the one 
in the picture, usually do the driving. The rake in the foreground 
is, like the thresher, home-made. On the roofs of the houses in the 
rear are pigeon cotes. All Egyptian farmers have hundreds of pigeons 
for family use and for sale; and many of them breed fancy pigeons. 

a year although the wild fowl would lay only 12 or 
13. Scientific breeding and care have brought about 
many other wonderful changes, and no one can put 
a limit to the miraculous results still to come. 

So too with plants. Careful selection of seed, breed¬ 
ing of new and improved varieties, and budding and 
grafting have done wonders. Potatoes have been 
selected to produce good-sized, regular-shaped tubers 
with smooth skin, growing a larger number to the hill. 


From the wild apple with its small sour fruit like crab 
apples, over a thousand varieties have been developed 
with various qualities of size and flavor. In place of 
the tiny acid grapes full of seeds, we now have the 
large and luscious Concords, Catawbas, and Niagaras, 
with few or no seeds. The yield of the grains has 
been increased, and special types have been developed, 
such as drouth-resisting wheat, beardless barley, 
and corn that will mature in the short season of 
the northern states. Even the makeup of the grain 
has been changed to produce larger proportions of 
protein, starch, fats, or sugars, to better serve a 
particular purpose. 

Agricultural chemistry has been one of the chief 
factors in this progress. By its aid we learn what 



By the native farmers 
wheat is still winnowed on 
the Mount of Olives and 
throughout Palestine just 
as it was in the days of 
Christ. With his crude 
wooden fork the thresher 
keeps tossing and re-toss¬ 
ing the grain and chaff into 
the air until the wind has 
carried the chaff away. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

46 














AGRICULTURE 


Uncle Sam as a Farmer 


plant foods are present in a particular sort of soil and 
what kinds and quantities of fertilizers should be 
used in improving poor soils. Stock feeds are 
analyzed to determine their values. 

Veterinary science has greatly reduced the loss from 
disease among farm animals, and a study of plant 
diseases has cut down 
the loss from blights, 
rusts, smuts, and other 
diseases and parasites 
attacking plant life. 

Entomology contrib¬ 
utes its share by 
studying the life of 
insects to determine 
which are helpful or 
harmful to the farmer, 
and how to encourage 
the helpers and curb 
the pests. 

In the United States 
the importance of tak¬ 
ing advantage of these 
various means of in¬ 
creasing the farm pro¬ 
duction of the nation 
is recognized by the 
national and state gov¬ 
ernments. In addition 
to the Department of Agriculture at Washington, agri¬ 
cultural experiment stations and agricultural colleges 
have been established in every state in the Union to 
work for better farming. These agencies help the 
farmer by distributing improved seed, by conducting 
experiments which often lead to great improvements in 
methods of farming, and by distributing information 
on all subjects of practical interest to the farmer. 
Many counties have farm agents who go directly to 
the farm upon request and conduct demonstrations 
of improved methods. Agriculture is taught in the 
public schools; and corn, garden, pig, and poultry 
clubs organized among boys and girls have been the 


means of distributing information and demonstrating 
its value in many farm communities. 

But great as is the progress that has been made, it 
has little more than pointed the way to the greater 
things that may be accomplished. For although the 
United States is leading all Europe in the total pro¬ 
duction of its farms, 
the yield per acre is 
very much lower. The 
difference is largely due 
to the fact that in the 
older countries labor is 
more abundant and the 
farms are small and 
intensively farmed; but 
it is entirely possible to 
double the yield in this 
country by more atten¬ 
tion to selection of 
good seed, and by 
raising only the im¬ 
proved varieties and 
types peculiarly fitted 
to climate and con¬ 
ditions. 

The United States is 
particularly fortunate 
in having a great vari¬ 
ety of climate and other 
conditions which makes it possible to raise a corre¬ 
spondingly great variety of products. The early settlers 
brought with them wheat, millet, timothy, clover, 
alfalfa, and other products from the Old World, and 
their farm animals—horses, cows, sheep, swine, and 
even chickens, ducks, and geese. Turkeys, however, 
and three important crops—corn, potatoes, and 
tobacco—as well as tomatoes and pumpkins, were 
gifts of the New World to the Old. While corn is 
still our most important farm crop, the adopted veg¬ 
etation of the Old World flourishes in all parts of our 
land. The introduction of new varieties from other 
countries is still going on. A fine rice growing in 


FEEDING THE FIELDS THAT GIVE US BREAD 





Every intelligent farmer realizes that he must feed the fields if he expects 
the fields to feed him, and is very careful about the use of fertilizers. This 
picture shows a manure-spreader at work. A web runs to a rapidly whirling 
toothed cylinder in the rear of the cart, and in this way the load is gradually 
worked out and scattered evenly and to a short distance on each side as 
the cart moves along. As you see, this farmer is using a slack winter 
day to make ready for spring planting. 


PREPARING THE SOIL FOR THE SEED 



This twenty-horsepower tractor is used in preparing the soil for the seed. While the knife-edged wheels of the disk harrows cut the son 
and throw U up into little ridges, the broad rollers in the rear, called “soil pulverizers,” run over these ridges and crush them down. America 
leads the world in the invention and use of labor-savmg agricultural machmery. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

47 











| AGRICULTURE 



Farming and Civilization 


Louisiana was brought from Japan. A variety of 
wheat which has flourished for centuries in the arid 
lands of Asia Minor and Russia makes a marvelous 
growth in the dry lands of the United States. A seed¬ 
less grape was brought from Italy, the olive tree from 
Spain, a hardy peach from China, and the fig tree 
from Smyrna. Special agents from the Bureau of 
Agriculture have penetrated to odd corners of the 
world remote from civilization, often braving dis¬ 
comfort and danger, to discover new varieties of 
grains, fruits, trees, and flowers suitable for our land. 
They have sent back to this country a precious col¬ 
lection of roots for transplanting, buds for grafting, 
and seeds of different kinds. As a result, Chinese 
elms are growing on the plains of the Dakotas to 
furnish windbreaks for that treeless region, and the 
ash from Kashgar grows on the alkali soil of Nevada. 
The peach growers of California are using the root of 
a wild Chinese peach which is peculiarly resistant to 
drouth and alkali soil. The Tangsi cherry now grow¬ 
ing in this country is the earliest to ripen by a week or 
ten days; and in California an orchard of the Chinese 
jujube has been planted which bears a fruit as delicious 
as the Persian Gulf date. 

Farming Now a Profession 

And what has happened to the farmer while all 
these changes have taken place? The new farmer is 
no longer a careless and ignorant hoe-man, blaming 
his failures to a “bad year.” He does not laugh at the 
idea of going to school to learn to farm, as did the 
farmers of only a few years ago. And he no longer 
works from sun to sun merely to keep himself and 
family from starvation—nor does his wife. For 
improved machinery and the creamery and cheese 
factory have taken much of the drudgery of farming 
from the shoulders of the farm housewife as well as 
the farmer. 

Farming is today a profession—a business counting 
its returns in millions; and the farmer who has been 
ready to profit by new inventions and the new 
lessons of science is earning the rewards of the suc¬ 
cessful business man. His farm buildings have 
increased in size and convenience. He rides in his 
automobile and enjoys such conveniences as the 
electric trolley, telephone, and daily mail, and his 
family enjoys many of the social and educational 
advantages enjoyed by his city friends. 

Farming in Egypt and Babylonia 

Wherever husbandry has been in highest esteem, 
there has been found a people advanced in civilization. 
Apart from the present-day advantages contributed 
by agricultural chemistry, new and improved ma¬ 
chinery, and modern transportation facilities, the 
husbandmen of some of the nations of antiquity were 
in many essentials so advanced as to bear comparison 
with those of today. The ancient Egyptians prac¬ 
ticed irrigation and crop rotation, and even the arti¬ 
ficial incubation of poultry was not uncommon. The 
people of Assyria and Babylonia also raised vast cereal 
crops by irrigation. 


Palestine afforded an early example of intensive 
farming, where small holdings were the rule. The 
limited farms, we learn from the Old Testament, pro¬ 
duced abundantly, and their fertility was maintained 
by mixed husbandry and the application of manures. 
The ancient Romans were the foremost of their time 
in solving problems of irrigation, tillage, and fertiliza¬ 
tion. Columella, Cato, Pliny, and others taught 
many of the modern principles of scientific farming. 

But after the breakup of the Roman Empire, there 
followed a thousand years of stagnation. All during 
the Middle Ages the most primitive practices pre¬ 
vailed. The upper classes devoted their energies to 
hunting and warfare, and left the tilling of the soil 
entirely to the ignorant peasants. During all this 
long period, agriculture was bound fast in the deadly 
grip of the open or unfenced three-field system. The 
land under cultivation about each village was usually 
divided into three great fields without hedges or 
fences. “Balks” of unplowed turf divided each of the 
fields into long and narrow strips of about an acre 
apiece, and each peasant cultivated from 10 to 30 of 
these strips. The curious thing is that no man’s land 
lay all together. The holdings were so intermixed 
that each man would have several separate strips in 
each of the three great fields, thus losing much time 
in going from one to another. 

A rude rotation of crops was practiced. All the 
holdings in one field would be planted one j^ear with 
wheat or some other winter grain, the next year with 
spring grains such as oats or barley, and the third year 
they would be plowed and left to lie fallow. Thus 
one-third of all the land was always idle, to say nothing 
of the immense tracts not under cultivation at all. 
All incentive and opportunity for progress was thus 
removed, and the yield was so low that eight bushels 
of wheat to the acre was considered a good crop. 

This condition lasted in England until the Black Death 
of the 14th century, which diminished the population by 
about one-half, led to scarcity of labor and caused a great 
advance in wages. To meet these conditions, many of the 
great landlords brought together and enclosed their domains 
and turned them into huge farms which could be more 
economically and scientifically cultivated, or pastured sheep 
upon them. The accumulation of capital presently made 
possible drainage fertilization, and other improvements 
which could only be carried out on a large scale. Thus the 
medieval system of small intermixed holdings gradually gave 
way to large enclosed farms. 

Early in the 18th century came changes which practically 
amounted to a revolution in agriculture. The growing of 
root crops such as turnips was begun, and a root crop was 
introduced in the rotation plan in place of the fallow fields. 
This increased by practically one-third the production area 
in any year, and provided a surplus of feed for wintering 
stock. A four-crop rotation which has been followed more 
or less strictly to the present time is credited to Lord Town- 
shend. Jethro Tull, another Englishman, invented the drill 
and introduced the method of sowing crops in rows so that 
they could be cultivated by a horse-hoe. Sometime after 
1760 Robert Bakewell established the principles of breeding 
by which all breeds of farm live stock have since been 
improved by careful selection, mating, and feeding. Then 
followed the great revolution which accompanied the intro¬ 
duction of improved tools and agricultural machinery. 


For any subject not 


found in 


its alphabetical 


48 


place 


see information 






WONDERS OF SCIENTIFIC LIVE STOCK BREEDING 



Hereford (For Beef) 


Scrub Cow 


Yorkshire (For Bacon) 


Common Hog 


Shropshire (For Mutton) 


Lincoln (For Wool) 


Common Sheep 


Thoroughbred Racer (For Speed) 


Percheron (Draft Horse) 


Broncho or Indian Pony 



contained in the Easy 


Reference 


F a c t -1 n d ex 

49 


a t 


the end of this 


work 













The Invisible Magician 


AIR 


The INVISIBLE OCEAN in Which WE LIVE 


A IR. We live at the 
bottom of a gaseous 
ocean, the atmospheric 
air which covers the 
earth. Without air 
neither animals nor 
plants could live. Thus 
the moon has no life on 
its surface, because it has 
no atmosphere. 

The climate which so 
affects the way in which 
we live—indeed often de¬ 
termines whether we can 
live—also depends upon the atmosphere and its move¬ 
ments. The cold winds from the north lower the tem¬ 
perature of a country, and the hot winds from the south 
raise the temperature. The winds also bring the clouds 


argon. There is about 
21 per cent of oxygen, 
about 78 per cent of 
nitrogen, and nearly one 
percent of argon. Argon 
is a very peculiar gas in 
that it makes no chemical 
combinations. Although 
it makes up one hun¬ 
dredth part of the at¬ 
mosphere, it was first 
discovered as a separate 
gas in 1894 by Lord 
Rayleigh and Sir William 
Ramsay. Besides these three gases, air contains 
minute traces of the rare gases neon, xenon and 
krypton, and a small fraction of a per cent of carbonic 
acid or carbon dioxide. Very “impure” air, such as 


A/TAN can live three weeks without food, three days 
^ without water, but only three minutes without air, 
says an old proverb. Though these figures may not be 
exactly accurate, they bring out in a striking way the 
prime importance of air to all life. Air is at once the 
commonest and the most valuable thing in the world. 
It takes part in every activity great or small on the sur¬ 
face of the globe, from whipping cream to hurricanes. 
It is a simple mixture of gases, yet has countless strange 
qualities little thought of but constantly used. Air makes 
man possible: here you may read how man has made air 
his servant. It turns our windmills, sustains our air¬ 
ships and airplanes, drives our ships, and is harnessed 
in a thousand ways for man’s use. 



A HEAVY LOAD WE NEVER NOTICE 

It would be rather hard for almost any of us to carry the weight of three elephants in the form shown in the picture. Yet, as a matter 
of fact, a medium-sized man has distributed over his body a pressure equal to thirty thousand pounds, or more than the weight of three 
good-sized elephants. Why we are able to sustain this enormous weight the article explains. 


of water vapor over the land where it falls as rain, giving 
the moisture without which our food could not grow. 
The invention of the airplane and of the dirigible 
balloon has made possible flight through the air by 
men, so that some believe that the great highways for 
distance will in the near future be through the air. 
In fact, the air is essential to almost every activity, 
great or small, on the surface of the earth, and is 
certain to be even more important in the future. 

And what is this marvelous substance, this air? 
Chemists tell us that it is mixture of a number of 
gases, principally of three gases, oxygen, nitrogen, and 


is found in poorly ventilated rooms, contains larger 
amounts of carbon dioxide. Free air also always 
contains water vapor, and this varies greatly from 
place to place and from day to day. 

Oxygen is the life-giving element of the air, the * 
nitrogen serving merely to dilute the strength of the 
oxygen. If the atmosphere were pure oxygen, living 
organisms would “burn themselves out” too fast. 
The steel grate in the stove would catch fire, decaying 
leaves might even burst into flame, and many other 
startling outbreaks would take place. 

The carbon dioxide in the air is produced by the 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

50 









THE GREATEST HEIGHTS AND THE GREATEST DEPTHS 



Highly rarefied, atmosphere 
believed to consist of lighter gases 
Hydrogen, Helium, etc. 
Estimated depth from lOO to 150 miles 


Upper limit of oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere estimated at 40 to 50 miles 

Twilight 

y+'Point where 
/' meteorite 
S • takes fire 


Highest measured altitude 
Small balloon 


carrying 
f instruments only, 

23.3 8 miles 

at Pavia, Italy, 1912 


est cloud limit 


Highest passenger 
balloon, 35,440feet 
Si" % Berlin, 1901 


Highest airplane 
40,800 feet 
Lieut. John A.MacPeady 
Dayton, Ohio, 

19 21 


Highest mountain, 
Mt, Everest, Himala¬ 
yas, 29,002 feet 


Sea level air pres 
Sure, 14 7noi i ndst- 


RJSPpest 
£oirrt reaclIS 
ed by subm, 
2 83 feet 


Here we have pictured for us many of the leading facts about the air. Since the highest measured altitude is only a little over 23 miles, 
you might wonder how we know the upper limit of oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and the depth of the highly rarefied atmosphere above. One 
of the means of making these estimates is indicated in the part of the picture which shows the point where a meteorite is set on fire by 
air friction. From the point in the atmosphere where a meteor is seen to take fire, it is possible to estimate with a fair degree of accu- 
racy the distance it must have traveled in order to have reached this degree of heat from the friction of the air, as indicated by tne line 

which reaches from the little cross up to the region of the ether of space. 


the Eaty 


Reference 


Fact-Index 

51 


a t 


the end of this 


work 


contained in 





































AIR 


Air and the Airmen 


THE INSIDE FACTS 
ABOUT THE AIR WE 
BREATHE 


less. When these two weights are equal, the balloon 
stops rising and floats at that level. If we decrease its 
weight by emptying sandbags overboard, it will rise 
to a higher level. If we decrease the amount of air it 
displaces by letting gas out of the gas-bag, it will fall 
to a lower level. 

At very high levels the air becomes so thin that men 
cannot live. The highest passenger 
balloon ascension on record is about 
seven miles; but balloons containing 
only scientific instruments have soared 
to much greater heights (see Airplane; 
Balloon). 

Why You Can Carry That 30,000 Pounds 
The weight of the air-belt around the 
earth produces at sea-level a pressure of 
14.7 pounds per square inch. This 
means that upon the skin of a medium¬ 
sized man there is a constant total pres¬ 
sure of about 30,000 pounds. The reason 
sight absolutely transparent, it is in This iii ustrat ion shows graph- he is not crushed is because air pressure 
reality not so. If it were so, the sky icaiiy what air is made of. a little is transmitted equally in every direction, 
even in the daylight would look black, something " 1 °ess s than ‘one^fourth He is like an inflated toy balloon with 
with the sharp bright spots of sun, vapor,” argon! e c^on m ^oide7 etc r enormous pressure outside but an 


action of the oxygen on the carbon, which is an 
important part of all organic or living matter. Every 
breath we draw forms carbon dioxide; every fire 
produces it. That is why the air in cities, where 
people are crowded together and where factory 
chimneys belch forth smoke, is less pure and healthful 
than country air. 

How Plants Purify the Air 
It may seem strange that this constant 
drain upon the atmosphere does not in 
the course of time make the air unfit 
to breath. This would actually happen 
if it were not for plant life. All green 
plants get their color from a substance 
called chlorophyll, which, under the 
influence of sunlight, seizes the carbon 
dioxide from the air, extracts the carbon 
for the use of the plant,, and turns the 
oxygen back into the atmosphere. 

While pure air may seem at first 



moon, and stars scattered over it. 

But in fact, when the sunlight strikes the atmos¬ 
phere of the earth, its rays are scattered by the 
tiny particles of air, and the blue rays are scattered 
farther than the red rays. Hence the light which 
comes to us from the clear sky is blue. At sunset the 
direct light from the sun is in general red because 
the blue rays have been largely scattered, leaving red 
the main color (see Spectrum and Spectroscope). The air 
also contains large quantities of fine dust particles as 
well as particles of water, particularly near the sur¬ 
face of the earth. These dust and water particles 
also scatter and separate the rays. The presence of 
dust particles in the air of a room can be seen when 
the room is darkened except where a narrow beam of 
sunlight comes in through a crack; the dust particles 
can be seen dancing in the path of the light. The 
dust particles in the higher atmosphere are in gen¬ 
eral much finer than those we see in a beam of light. 

How much does air weigh? Much more than you 
think. It varies of course with the heat and the 
pressure; but at sea-level, and at the ordinary tem¬ 
perature of a summer day, one cubic foot of air 
weighs about .0729 of a pound. That means that 
13% cubic feet—or the air in a cube-shaped box of 
which each side measures a little less than 2 feet 
5 inches—weighs a pound. 

How High Does the Atmosphere Extend ? 

It is estimated that for all practical purposes the 
atmosphere stops 40 to 50 miles from the earth. In a 
highly rarefied form it undoubtedly extends much 
farther than that before the pure ether begins, but we 
shall speak of it within this limit. When a balloon 
rises, it finds the air growing thinner and lighter, so 
that the difference between the weight of the balloon 
and the weight of the air it displaces becomes less and 


equally strong pressure inside, so there 
is little strain on the delicate elastic tissue. When 
balloonists or aviators reach great heights, the outside 
pressure becomes so much less that blood often oozes 
from their ears, and they sometimes become uncon¬ 
scious from a rush of blood to the head. 

Since air varies in weight and density, it naturally 
varies in its resistance to objects passing through it. 
At tremendously high speeds this resistance is so 
great that the friction creates fierce heat. Shooting 
stars or meteors are cold until they strike the atmos¬ 
phere of the earth, but the heat of friction then 
becomes so intense that the rock or mineral of which 
meteors are composed catches fire and they usually 
burn up before they reach the ground. The height 
at which they start to burn is sometimes used to 
estimate the thickness of the earth’s air belt. 

Air Resistance and Air Pressure 

But if the air resistance hinders our progress in 
one way, it is invaluable to us in another. Without 
it, an airplane could not rise from the ground, for it 
is by driving the inclined planes against the dense 
atmosphere that the motor is able to force the weight 
of the machine upward. In a vacuum a feather and 
a ball of lead fall with equal speed. 

Another important fact about air is that it is com¬ 
pressible and is elastic; that is, when compressed it 
exerts an expansive force opposing the compression. 
Thus by means of a compression pump we blow up 
the tires of our bicycles and automobiles, and the 
compressed air is even more elastic than rubber. By 
storing compressed air in tanks, the expansive force 
of the air can be used later for power, as in air brakes 
on railroad trains and street cars, in rock drills and 
riveters, and in many other devices worked with 
compressed air (see Brakes). 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

52 






] Things You Can Do with Air 

In that dangerous toy, the air-gun, the bullets are 
discharged by means of compressed air instead of 
gunpowder. A lever attached to a piston forces the 
air into a chamber, usually in the stock. This chamber 
has a valve opening into the barrel just behind the 
place where the bullet is lodged. When the trigger 
is pressed, the valve is opened and the compressed air 
rushes into the barrel, forcing the bullet out. 

The pressure of the atmosphere is what makes 
suction possible. A suction pump does not draw the 
water upward. It simply exhausts the air pressure 
in the pipe above the water, and the pressure of the 
air on the water outside the pipe forces it up inside. 


A I R 


Since the pressure of the air is limited to 14.7 
pounds per square inch, there is of course a limit to 
the weight of water it will force up into a pipe. This 
limit is reached at a height of 32 feet. It is impossible 
to make water rise higher than that by suction. 
Liquid mercury is 13 X A times as heavy as water, there¬ 
fore atmospheric pressure will support a column of 
mercury only about 30 inches high. This is the 
basis on which the mercury barometer is made (see 
Barometer). 

Most of the qualities of air can best be illustrated with 
the vacuum air pump. In its simplest form it is a pump so 
arranged that it will suck the air from beneath a large in¬ 
verted glass bowl or “receiver.” 



Some Interesting 


Things to Do with Air 



It’s the Air that Does It 


Place a lighted candle beneath the bowl and then exhaust 
the air. The candle will go out for lack of oxygen. Insects 
and animals will die under the same treatment. If an 
electric bell is set off inside the bowl after the air is exhausted, 
it can scarcely be heard, for there is little or no air to carry 

the vibration of sound. Put a glass 
of water which has just stopped 
boiling under the bowl; when the 
air is pumped out, the water will 
start to boil again, for the tempera¬ 
ture at which liquids will boil 
becomes lower as the air pressure 
decreases. A toy balloon which 
contains air will swell up and may 
.burst when the air around it is 
exhausted. 

Many simple experiments can 
be made without the vacuum pump. 
Take a glass, fill it with water, and 
then lay a smooth sheet of paper over the top. Now turn 
the glass upside down, holding the paper closely over the 
mouth of the glass with one hand; then take the hand away. 
The paper will hold the water in without any other support, 
showing the power of air pressure. 

The Bottle and the Egg 

Drop a piece of lighted paper into a large milk bottle. 
Take a moderately hard 7 boiled egg, from which all the shell 
has been removed, and put it point down in the mouth of 
the bottle after the paper has 
burned up. In a few seconds the 
egg will start to move down into 
the neck. If the egg is not too 
large and hard, it will presently 
pop into the bottle with a loud 
noise. This is because the burn¬ 
ing paper heated the air, which 
expanded, so that some of it was 
driven out through the neck. 

After the egg was placed in the 
mouth the air cooled again and 
contracted, causing a partial 
vacuum so that the pressure of 
the outside air forced the egg 
downward. 

You can easily show that the 
air has weight by weighing a de¬ 
flated football bladder on a 
delicate pair of scales, then pump¬ 
ing it full of air with a bicycle 
pump and weighing it again. 

The bladder when filled with 



Making a Bottle Suck an Egg 


_ _ air is heavier than 

when empty, though it may seem lighter because of its 
buoyancy, and the difference is exactly the weight of the 
compressed air that you have pumped into it. With larger 
objects, such as automobile tires, the weight of the air is 
great enough to be easily observed by merely your muscular 

contained in the Easy Reference 


sensations. Next time you get a puncture and have to 
change a tire, lift the punctured tire and then the inflated 
tire you are about to put on; you can easily feel the differ¬ 
ence, which is due solely to the weight of the air. 

THIS SHOWS JUST WHY A POPGUN POPS 


This experiment, as explained in the text, shows why your popgun 
pops. The air in the gun is compressed and 
allowed to expand suddenly. 

Still another experiment will show that air, like all gases, 
is elastic and can be compressed. Take a small tumbler 
or wine-glass with a stem and invert it on the surface of a 
jar or basin of water. The glass when it touches the water 
is full of air, as is shown in Figure A. But if you press the 
glass down to the bottom of the jar, you will see that some 
water rises in the glass, so that the air only partly fills it 
(Fig. B). The explanation is that the pressure of the 
atmosphere on the surface of the water has forced the water 
up into the glass, compressing into a smaller space the air 
that formerly filled it. 

Showing Expansion by Heat 

To show that air expands when heated, take a slender 
glass tube closed at one end. Put the open end in a bowl 
of water. The water will rise in it to a certain level, com¬ 
pressing the air as in the previous experiment. Now hold 
a flame to the upper part of the tube, and presently the level 
of the water in the tube will be lowered, as the heated air 
expands and forces the water out. 

When air is compressed and at the same time reduced to 
a temperature of about 312° below zero Fahrenheit, it 
becomes liquid, and has many interesting properties (see 
Liquid Air). 

In recent years much study has been made of methods of 
“fixing” atmospheric nitrogen for commercial use. Nitro¬ 
gen does not unite chemically with other substances, that 
is it is not “fixed,” except with great difficulty and under 
special conditions; and yet these compounds are necessary 
for agricultural fertilizers and for explosives. To make 
these nitrates, the United States government spent many 
millions of dollars during the World War in experimental 
and operating plants (see Nitrogen). 

Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

53 






















AIRPLANE 


Story of the Birdmen 


] 


The SOARING MOTOR-CAR of the AIR 



Tf'OR ages men looked up hopelessly into the blue sky, envying the birds. Then 
came balloons that floated amid the clouds. But men were not satisfied: 
“We want to fly as the birds fly,” they said. One of these “mad dreamers” 
was an American scientist, who after years of work in his laboratory said, “It 
can be done!” The world scoffed at him. But the Wright brothers believed and 
said, “It shall be done!” and they succeeded. As a result, men today fly faster 
and higher than any bird, carry huge weights on thin swift wings far above the 

clouds, and leap over the oceans. 


ONE OF THE EARLY 
“BIRDMEN” 

This isn’t Darius Green and his 
flying machine. It is the artist’s 
way of typifying the various fan¬ 
tastic attempts men made at fly¬ 
ing before they settled down to the 
careful scientific study of the prob¬ 
lem and so, step by step, finally 
solved it with the simple but no 
less wonderful airplane of today. 


A irplane. Never 

did things change 
so fast as in these days. 
Your grandfather’s 
father may have seen 
the coming of the 
steamboat, struggling 
along the river or lying 
with its nose against 
the banks. Yourgrand- 
father saw the early 
railway train, which 
came pushing proudly 
into the world at 20 
miles an hour. Your 
father saw the motor¬ 
car riding the roads 
like a giant of power 
at a mile a minute when 
the driver let it go. But you have seen a thing that 
clever men and wise men hardly dreamed of years 
ago; you have seen a thing that wise men scoffed at 
even when you were born—you have seen an airplane 
riding through the clouds! 

In all the history of the world there has hardly been 
anything equal to that. Think of it in any way you 
like, and it must seem to you a miracle. Throw a 
stone up into the air and it falls down; throw a stream 
of water up and it comes back to earth; throw a 
feather up and, although it floats a little wiiile on the 
wind, it soon glides back to the solid earth. 

They fall, all of them, by what we call the law of 
gravitation, wiiich means that the earth pulls every¬ 
thing towards its center. A pebble rolls down hill; 
water runs to the lowest point. It is the pull of 
something in the mass of the earth that draws all 
things towards it as a magnet draws a needle. It 
wall pull a flint out of a chalk bank if w r e give it time; 
it wall pull down an overhanging tree if it is left long 
enough without support. This universal power of 
matter to attract other matter to it, the larger mass 
attracting a smaller, is one of the mysteries that no 
man understands. 

And yet an airplane flies past a mile above our 
heads, so high that it looks like a bird, so beautiful 
that it looks as if Nature herself had made it, so 
confident of its power as it passes out of sight that it 
thrills a man to feel that he belongs to the race that 
made it. Now it is a speck! Soon our eyes will lose 
it, but we know that there is a man up there. 


It is not the first contrivance that has taken a man 
up in the clouds. There have been balloons and there 
are airships, but the “flying motor-car” w’hich w’e call 
an airplane is far more wonderful than these. The 
balloon and the airship are lighter than air, and they 
sail in the sea of air in which we live as easily as a 
ship sails on the sea of water in which the fishes live. 
But the airplane is heavier than air. 

Why an Airplane Flies 

Remember that air is something very real. It is so 
thin that w r e cannot see it, so fine and colorless that 
w r e can hardly believe it is there. But it is as real as 
the chair you sit in, and it has w r eight as water has, 
strength as w r ater has, pow r er to bear things on it as 
w’ater has. When you fly a kite it is sailing on air; 
it rests on the air beneath it. 

A thing that is lighter than the bed it lies on can¬ 
not sink into its bed. Put a feather on a feather 
bed and the bed wall remain undisturbed, but put a 
piece of iron there and the bed will give way to it. 
It is so with water. A feather is lighter than water, 
and wall float; a piece of iron is heavier than water, 
and will sink. But if you take a basin and rest that 
on the w r ater, the basin will float because it has much 
more wrater to rest on and is not so heavy as its bed. 

And so, if you beat a mighty sheet of iron into an 
enormous basin, it will still float, because, as long as 
it is filled with air and rests on an enormous stretch of 
water, it is lighter than that great body of water. 
Even if you put heavy engines in this iron basin, and 
fill it wdth people and thousands of tons of all sorts of 
things, it will float like paper on the sea, so smoothly 
that sometimes it will go a thousand miles and a 
glass of water w’ould not slip off a table with the 
rocking. 

So an iron ship sails, though it weighs a thousand 
tons. So an airship sails with its heavy engines, with 
its crew of perhaps 20 or 30 men, all held up by an 
enormous bag of gas, which, even with the load that 
hangs on it, is lighter than the bed of air it rests on. 
The airship and the water-ship have gravitation on 
their side—that is to say, they rest on something 
heavier than themselves, and gravitation does not 
pull them down; they sink naturally into their bed. 
But the airplane has gravitation against it, and it 
must fight all the time for its life. 

How does it do it? How does the great weight 
keep up there, heavier than the air it rests on? 

There are many w r ays in w’hich we could explain it, 
most of them difficult to understand unless we go 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

54 









It Was the Kite that Did It! 



AIRPLANE 


into the laws of physics and into mathematics; but 
one of them is simple. 

An airplane flies for much the same reason that a 
kite flies. The wind strikes under the inclined surface 
of a kite, and as long as the string keeps it from being 
blown backward, the wind force holds the kite up. 
Even on a perfectly calm day a kite will fly if you 
“create” a wind by running with the kite string. 

An airplane’s wings are inclined like the surface of 
a kite. The engine and whirling propeller take the 
place of the kite string and the runner. The airplane 
“creates” its own wand. It is the power of the engine 
alone that keeps it going. The engine turns the 
propeller and the propeller draws the flying chariot 
behind it. Take a screw and let its point get a grip 
on a piece of wood, and it wall draw its whole length 
into the wood with powerful force. Put a big screw 
on a ship and drive it into the w r ater, and it will 
carry through the w r ater the ship and all that is in 
it. Put a screw into an airplane and drive it into 
the air, and it will carry through the air whatever is 
fixed behind it. 

Screwing a Path through the Air 

The propeller is the screw. It screws its way 
through air, w r hich is as real as wood and water. The 
air resists the propeller of an airplane, but the pro¬ 
peller screws its way exactly like the screw of a ship 
or the screw in a piece of wood, and the airplane must 
follow where the propeller goes, and as it rushes 
through the air, the inclined planes are not only 


THE “FOLLY” AS IT FLEW 



Although Professor Langley did not reach the point of building a 
flying machine that would carry a passenger, he did build a machine 
—a model of only 1 M horse-power—which was the first heavier- 
than-air machine driven by its own power to make a successful 
flight. The Wrights, who made flying machines practical, used 
the information obtained by Professor Langley in his experiments. 
Up to this time it was the fashion among the newspapers to regard 
the idea of flying as an impracticable dream, and this model was 
known as “Langley’s Folly.” 

pushed upw r ard by the air beneath, but the wings are 
so shaped that their great forward speed creates a 
vacuum on their upper surface w’hich holds them up 
by suction, so to speak. This upper vacuum is one 
of the most important features of flying. 

Remember that air is matter, and the thought of 
an airship riding on it, or an airplane screwing its 
way through it, will be easier for you to understand. 
The flying motor-car cannot stand still like the 
floating airship, but as long as its engines drive this 
propeller around, it wall screw its way through, and 

contained in the Easy Reference 


the marvelous things that control its wdngs wall send 
it up into the clouds or bring it slowly back to earth. 
The w r ay is not always smooth. It is bumpy at 
places; there are hills and dales for the airplane to 
cross; and suddenly it may fall a hundred feet. But 


THE GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF ALL FLYING MACHINES 



This affair, simpler even than your box kite, may be said to be the 
great-grandfather of all flying machines. It is the kite first used 
by the Wright brothers in making experiments with heavier-than- 
air craft. Next came the glider without power—the grandfather. 
Then the introduction of the engine that supplied the power—the 
father of all types of flying machines. 

it wall right itself wath perfect ease; and the control 
of man over his new motor-car of the skies has 
become one of the greatest human triumphs of all 
time. 

Today, in regions with regular mail, express, and 
passenger air service, the whirr of an airplane wang- 
ing through the sky scarcely wins a glance from 
the man in the street or the farmer at his plow. Fly¬ 
ing machines speed from one side of the continent to 
the other; they hop across oceans; they carry tourists, 
men in the rush of business, public officials hurrying 
to distant conferences, physicians on emergency 
calls. In fact, the airplane has taken its permanent 
place with the locomotive, steamship, and automobile. 

The prospect of flying has fascinated men since 
the ancient days of fabled Icarus, who flew so near 
the sun that the wax fastenings of his wings melted, 
dropping him to his death in the sea. When scientists 
had learned something of the properties and resistance 
of air, there appeared from time to time men who 
said: “If the eagle, which is heavier than air, can fly, 
why can’t man fly if we invent the proper wings?” 
They were answered with elaborate figures to show 
that the proposals were ridiculous, and that only 
with the balloon, which is lighter than air, could man 
ever hope to navigate the heavens. 

To the United States Belongs This Discovery 

To the United States belongs the honor of having 
proved in theory as well as in practice that it was 
possible for men to fly in heavier-than-air machines. 
Haphazard attempts without scientific basis had been 
made in Europe. Then it was demonstrated by 
means of huge box kites and “gliders” launched from 
hilltops that the human body can be sustained in 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

55 










SK'I What Came of “Langley’s Folly” 


AIRPLANE 


the air with 
properly bal¬ 
anced planes, 
provided suffi¬ 
cient air pressure 
is brought to bear 
on the under 
surface of the 
planes, either 
through the force 
of the wind or 
the momentum 
imparted to the 
machine. It re¬ 
mained, how¬ 
ever, for Prof. 
Samuel Pierpont 
Langley, secre¬ 
tary of the 


‘BELLY-BUSTER” IN THE AIR 



the machine dove 
into the river and 
was wrecked. 
Ridicule and lack 
of financial sup¬ 
port then caused 
Professor Lang¬ 
ley to abandon 
his project. 

Nine days la¬ 
ter, on December 
17, while the 
newspapers were 
still jibing at 
“Langley’s fol¬ 
ly,” an epoch- 
making event 
took place in the 
sandy hills near 


Smithsonian In- After the Wright brothers had worked out certain principles with their first box kite, they Kitty Hawk, N. 

. . made another kite called a “glider,” on which you here see Wilbur Wright sailing through ~ J ’ 

Stltution at the air. It had no engine. He just ran w'th it, as you run with a sled, and then jumped off C. A machine 

Wfltshincrtnn tn a hi 8 h P lace and was carried forward some distance. In this way the problem of the wings j ; u . _ 

YV asnington, to was solved. The next thing was to supply motive power. driven Dy a S1X- 


demonstrate the 
laws of self-propelled mechanical flight. 

Professor Langley constructed a 16-foot model, 
which he called an “aerodrome,” and equipped it with 
a small steam engine. On May 6,1896, this machine, 
which resembled in form the modern airplane, flew 
unattended over the Potomac River for a minute and 
a half, the full time of its water and fuel supply. It 


bladed propeller 
attached to a gasoline motor rose from the ground, 
carrying a pilot, and flew 852 feet in 59 seconds. 
The pilot was Wilbur Wright, who has gone down to 
history as the first real “birdman.” His brother 
Orville, who had helped to build the machine, watched 
the experiment from the ground. 

Encouraged by Professor Langley’s advice and 


AND NOW THE FLYING MACHINE FLIES 



Here you see the great problem of the flying machine solved, so far as actual flying is concerned. It shows the first successful airplane 
at Kitty Hawk rising from the ground—“taking oS,” as the airmen call it. It stayed in the air only a few seconds when it suddenly darted 
for the ground the way your kite often does, but it was the first time in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had 
raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight. At last the myth dream of the Greeks in the story of Daedalus had come true! 


covered more than half a mile, then settled gently to 
the surface of the river. Seven years later Professor 
Langley completed a man-carrying machine. On 
Dec. 8,1903, piloted by the inventor’s assistant, it was 
launched from the roof of a houseboat on the Potomac. 
Crowds, had gathered to see the experiment. But 
something went wrong with the launching gear, and 


example, the Wright brothers had been experimenting 
for several years at their home in Dayton, Ohio. They 
had seen that in the gasoline engine, which was still 
somewhat of a novelty, lay the future of flying. 
Unable to find a light enough engine on the market, 
they built their own, which developed 8 horse-power. 
The entire weight of their biplane, including the 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see infor motion 

56 
























The Wrights Actually Fly 



AIRPLANE 


FLYING MACHINE HISTORY IN PICTURES 




2 





No. 1 is a passen¬ 
ger-carrying Bleriot 
monoplane of the same 
type as that used by 
Louis Bleriot in the first 
flight across the English 
channel, from Baraques 
to Dover, on July 25, 

1909. Bleriot was the 
first to build a successful monoplane. 

No. 2 shows the earliest type of hydroplane. Glenn Curtiss, the 
inventor, is standing on the pontoon, having just alighted on the 
water after a successful flight. 

No. 3 shows Atwood arriv : ng at Grant Park, Chicago, after a flight 
from Washington, D. C. This was one of the earliest long-distance 
air journeys. 

No. 4 shows the first machine to make a flight in public. It was 


built in 1906 by Alberto 
Santos-Dumont, who 
was already famous for 
his work with dirigible 
balloons. This curious 
airplane with its box- 
kite wings gave its first 
exhibition near Paris 
on August 22, 1906, but 
this type of flyer lacked strength of construction for long flights. 

No. 5 shows one of the earlier types of Wright biplanes. Orville 
Wright is seen standing in front between the bars of the frame¬ 
work, and Wilbur Wright (the man with the black hat) is helping 
to hold the tail of the machine, while the engine is being tested. 

No. 6 shows Paulhan, one of the pioneers of aviation, flying in one 
of the famous Farman biplanes. It illustrates the attempt, after¬ 
wards abandoned, to steady the craft by that projecting fin in front. 


Lk 


pilot, was 800 pounds. For the next five years they 
were busily occupied in perfecting their apparatus. 

In the United States the achievement of the Wright 
brothers made a great sensation, but both the govern¬ 
ment and the public failed to see its usefulness. The 
young inventors received little financial encourage¬ 
ment at home. When they went to Europe, France 
seized eagerly upon the new invention. French engi¬ 
neers set at work to improve the details of the biplane, 
and devised new models which included the mono¬ 
plane. As a result of their work, supremacy in the 

contained in the Easy Reference 


air soon passed to the French, who held virtually all 
the flying records from 1908 to 1914. 

There was a reason behind this. In those days few 
people imagined that the airplane would ever be 
commercially useful. It seemed too unstable a 
vehicle. But the shrewdest military authorities fore¬ 
saw at least a part of its value as a war machine. 
The United States did not look at the world through 
military eyes, and let the opportunity slip. It was 
not so with the nations of Europe, who were sleeping 
on their arms expecting the great conflict. 

Fact-Index at the end of this w or h 

57 









































AIRPLANE 



The “Push” and the “Pull” 


WHY IT IS BEST TO FLY HIGH 



The safest height for flying is 3,000 feet and above. This picture shows the reason. Below this height the wind—particularly where the 
earth’s surface is uneven—blows at various angles and velocities, so that there are formed what are called “pockets,” into which your machine 

may suddenly pitch and so cause you to lose control of it. 


In the hundreds of experi¬ 
ments which followed, the 
chief difficulty was the evolu¬ 
tion of a new type of motor 
which should combine great 
power with little weight. The 
invention of the Gnome ro¬ 
tary engine, in which the 
cylinders arranged like the 
spokes of a wheel revolved, 
while the crank shaft remain¬ 
ed stationary, was the first 
great step in this direction. 
In his engine the propeller 
was fastened directly to the 
revolving crank-case, and the 
engine cooled itself by the 
very speed of its whirling. 
Later the form of engine with 
stationary cylinders of the 
automobile type was im- 


THE VACUUM THAT AIDS THE PLANE 



Here we see how the air, when it is struck by the “hump” on 
the upper forward edge of an airplane’s wings, is thrown 
upward in a curve, creating a vacuum above each wing. It 
i •, n j is this vacuum which gives the wing most of its lift. Indeed, 

proved, until it excelled even we may say that an airplane is literally pulled up into the air 

by the suction which its own speed creates. To prevent the 
upper wing of a biplane from interfering with the vacuum of 
the lower wing, it is built farther forward, as you see here. 


the Gnome engine. 

The form of the airplane 
itself was soon reduced to a few standard types— 
monoplanes, biplanes, and triplanes; “tractors” and 
“pushers.” The tractor type has the propeller in 


front, pulling the machine 
through the air; the pusher 
has it at the rear of the 
planes. The monoplane, 
offering to the air the resist¬ 
ance of only one set of wings, 
is the speedier machine; but 
the biplane, with its greater 
wing surface distributed over 
tw T o levels, proves steadier 
and more reliable. The tri¬ 
plane is particularly useful 
for raising and carrying heavy 
loads. 

The Airplane in the 
World War 

Independent experimenting 
might have continued for 
years, with slow improve¬ 
ment, had it not been for the 
World War of 1914-18. Sud¬ 
denly this fierce test was put 
upon the airplane, wiiich was 
then only nine years old. 
years saw the most remarkable 


The next four 
development ever achieved in any human invention. 
France entered the w r ar with 500 to 600 fairly service- 


F or any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

58 
























HOW LITTLE FLYING MACHINES ARE TAUGHT TO FLY 



From a toy sewing machine making a doll’s dress, you could see exactly how a big sewing machine of the same type would work; that’s 
plain enough, isn’t it? But how in the world could a toy flying machine with wings not much bigger than a pigeon’s—and standing 
still mind you—show how a big machine with a wing span of 100 feet would act when traveling at the rate of 100 miles an hour? This is how: 
Suspended by wires a little way inside this enormous tube with the bell-shaped mouth—that mouth is more than ten feet across—is a 
little model of a flying machine, and at the other end of this tunnel is an engine with a suction fan attached to it that draws wind through 
the tunnel at the rate of 60 to 100 miles an hour. Although the little flying machine is not flying at all, it behaves in this draft of wind 
as if it were sailing forward at whatever rate the blast is blowing. In this way the flying machine builders find just what changes need 
to be made in order to make the big plane built on the model a success, and they keep tinkering with it until they get it to do what 

they want it to do. 

Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

59 


contained in the Easy 




























The Future of the Airplane 


1 AIRPLANE 

able machines; their chief defect was their great 
variety, a fact which made it difficult to provide 
standard parts to keep them in repair. Great Britain, 
where no great official encouragement had been given 
to airplane builders, had only 82 machines. Belgium 
had perhaps an equal number. Germany, on the 
other hand, had standardized her military planes 
under government supervision, and had between 600 
and 700 machines. 

No nation, however, had dreamed of actual air 
battles. The war planes were designed for obser¬ 
vation or sentry purposes only, with perhaps some 
expectation of use for bomb-dropping. But it soon 
became obvious to the army leaders that, besides 
observing the troop movements of the enemy, it was 
an important part of the “game” to prevent the enemy 
from observing their own activities. French flyers, 
therefore, began to carry pistols and rifles into the 
clouds to shoot down German machines. The Ger¬ 
mans replied in kind, and it was not long before 
airplanes on both sides were equipped with machine 
guns, and the “war in the air” began in earnest. 

Even greater changes were going on behind the 
lines. The countries at war saw that the “general 
utility” airplane was not efficient. Under the 
pressure of the tremendous life-and-death competition, 
they began specializing in different types for different 
purposes. Small single-seaters, capable of great 
speed and rapid climbing, were designed for actual 
air battles. These had machine guns mounted in 
front and accurately timed to fire between the whirring 
blades of the propeller. For scouting or observation 
purposes over the enemy’s lines and for directing 
artillery fire, heavier biplanes were built, capable of 
carrying, in addition to the pilot, an observer with 
his maps and instruments; those were equipped with 
two machine guns, one of which could be turned to 
fire in any direction. Finally for long distance 
bombing raids very large and powerful biplanes and 
triplanes were constructed, which could lift a great 
weight of explosives and a large supply of gasoline. 
Toward the end of the war some of the bigger “bomb¬ 
ers” were equipped with steel armor, to protect them 
against machine-gun fire. 

The progress in land flying was followed by equal 
progress in sea flying. Before the war many ex¬ 
periments had been made with airplanes mounted on 
boat-shaped skids called pontoons, which made it 
possible to start or end a flight on smooth water. 
The seaplanes developed by the opposing navies 
during the war soon surpassed everything that went 
before. They were made to ride rough seas for hours, 
if necessary, and to stay in the air from sunrise to 
sunset. The British, and later the American, sea¬ 
planes proved immensely valuable in detecting Ger¬ 
man submarines, which they could pick out by reason 
of the height at which they flew, even when the diving 
boats were far under water. In several instances they 
even dropped bombs directly upon the “U-boats.” 

Both army and navy planes came to be equipped 


with wireless telegraph or wireless telephone appara¬ 
tus. Instruments for registering altitude, speed, and 
angle of flight, special compasses, drift-meters, and a 
number of other attachments peculiar to air travel 
were speedily invented and put into use. 

In addition to their actual fighting duties, airplanes 
proved of great value for rapid passenger service. 
Military commanders were able to fly to the front 
lines, take note of the whole panorama of battle, and 
return to headquarters, all within a few minutes. 
Frequently high officials of the allied nations flew 
back and forth across the British Channel to attend 
important conferences. 

It has been often said that the airplane revolution¬ 
ized warfare, but it is no less true that warfare 
revolutionized the airplane. Inside of four years, 
airplane building, which had been an expensive hobby, 
became an established world-wide industry. Backed 
by the enormous resources of great nations, engineers 
of the highest skill attacked the problem of flying, 
and soon overcame its chief obstacles. 

Perhaps the greatest advance was made in the 
development of the gasoline engine. At the beginning 
of the war the ordinary airplane motor weighed 437 
pounds and developed 112 horsepower, thus weigh¬ 
ing almost four pounds for each horsepower. By the 
close of the war, the United States, in its famous 
Liberty motor, had developed an engine which weighed 
only 1.8 pounds per horsepower and which could be 
turned out in large numbers through “quantity pro¬ 
duction” as a result of standardized parts. It was 
not, however, applicable to the smaller fighting 
machines. 

The Airplane in Time of Peace 

No sooner had the fighting stopped in western 
Europe than the nations sought to apply their air¬ 
plane experience to peacetime pursuits. Regular 
mail service was established between the principal 
cities of the United States, and Europe soon followed 
this lead. Air express and air passenger traffic came 
next. Private companies built huge machines with 
glass-enclosed cabins, containing tables, chairs, writ¬ 
ing desks, heating apparatus, electric lights, and 
carrying 25 or more persons in great comfort. A 
regular service between London and Paris was soon 
established. Early in 1919 an Italian machine carried 
78 passengers aloft, and an American flying boat took 
up 51. The best war speeds were soon equalled and 
surpassed. A biplane flew from Washington to New 
York in 80 minutes, at a rate of 162 miles an hour, 
and a few days later this sustained speed was raised 
in a Middle-West flight to 167 miles an hour. At 
this velocity Chicago is brought within five hours of 
New York and San Francisco less than 20. Even 
greater speeds have since been reached. Short flights 
have been made at the rate of more than 190 miles 
an hour. 

Daring flyers have also attained tremendous 
heights. One of the most spectacular attempts to set 
new altitude records was that of Major R. W. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

60 






TRICKS THE FIGHTING AIRMEN PLAY 



The Most Frequently 
Used Combat 
Maneuver, the Vrille 


He Pretended to be Shot 
Down but you see he wasn't 
This Maneuver is called the 
“Vrille" or “Tail Spin” 


A Puzzle for the 
* Pursuer, the Famous 
“ Ronversement" or 
Immelman Turn" 


At the too on the left you see one of the commonest and most useful of combat maneuvers, the “vrille,” or “tail spin.” The pilot banks 
his machine sharply and dives, immediately straightening out. To the right you see the same maneuver repeated in a series of loops, 
which mimic the action of a machine which has got out of control. In the center to the left the famous “Immelmann turn” is represented. 
In this the flyer climbs sharply as if about to “loop the loop,” but instead, at the height of the loop, he suddenly twists the machine about 
and straightens out at the higher level. In the lower right-hand corner is shown the quickest way to turn an airplane the virage, or sudden 

bank in which the wings are perpendicular to the earth. 


contained in the E a* y Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hi t work 

61 





















AIRPLANE 


Various Types of Machines^ 


SOME INTERESTING MECHANICAL BIRDS 



The picture at the left shows the De Haviland battleplane, one of the most successful American types. Attached to the front of 
the radiator ar‘e the roaring blades. In some of the battleplanes the gun fires its bullets directly between these whirhng blades the 
firing of the gun being so timed by delicate mechanism that it goes off just after the blade has passed a given point. To the right 
is one kind of flying machine that carries United States mail. It is built of metal throughout, while in most flying machines much 

wood is used. It has the advantage of being fireproof. 



This is one of the giants of the airplane family. It is 106 feet wide from wing tip to wing tip, has two fuselages, or bodies, each SO 
feet long, and a large car in the center which will hold a crew of four men. It can remain in the air 16 hours and travel at the rate of 
110 miles an hour with a load gf 7,776 pounds. It is one of Uncle Sam’s bombing planes. 


^ * 


4f 


SX 





The first picture on the left shows what you would see if you were sitting in the pilot’s seat. Those round things—most of them— 
are indicators that tell the pilot about such things as wind velocity, engine speed, altitude, gasoline and oil supply. The picture in 
the center shows what is known as Model K-T of a Dayton-Wright cabin cruiser. How trim and beautiful it is; and what a 
delightful arrangement to have all those windows in the passenger compartment, including the windows in the roof! It’s a regular 
sun parlor on wings. The picture on the right shows a seat in a flying machine for carrying two passengers. In front sits the pilot 
with that control lever between his legs. This lever has four motions. When he pushes it forward the plane dips down; when 
backward, it soars; when he moves it to the right the machine tips or banks to the right, and vice versa. 


^ato 


Schroeder, who on Feb. 27, 1920, rose 36,020 feet 
near Dayton, Ohio. His eyeballs were frozen and he 
became unconscious as he reached this tremendous 
height; the machine started to fall, but after a drop 
of 2,000 feet the pilot recovered his senses sufficiently 


to effect a safe landing. His altimeter, the instru¬ 
ment which measures altitude, had made an accurate 
record of his voyage above the clouds. 

But greater than all these achievements are the 
airplane flights across the Atlantic. The dream of 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

62 








































Over the Sea on Wooden Wings! 


I#® 




AIRPLANE 


1 


every airman came true in May, 1919, when Lieut.- 
Com. A. C. Read of the United States Navy piloted 
the seaplane NC-4 from New York to Lisbon, Portu¬ 
gal, stopping in Newfoundland and the Azores Islands. 
The machine left New¬ 
foundland on May 17, 
and landed in the Azores 
in 15 hours and 13 min¬ 
utes. Leaving the Azores 
on May 27, the plane 
flew to Lisbon in 9 hours 
and 43 minutes, com¬ 
pleting the first trans¬ 
atlantic trip in 26 hours 
and 40 minutes actual 
fljdng time. Less than 
a month later this record 
was broken when the 
British flyer, Capt. John 


WHERE THE DARING AIRMEN CROSSED THE ATLANTIC 



passage over international boundaries. The experi¬ 
ence of careful flyers has proved that the dangers of air 
travel can largely be eliminated. With improvements 
in construction and stabilizing devices and with the 

development of the para¬ 
chutes, which enable 
pilot and passengers to 
float down safely when 
the machine beneath 
them falls, we may ex¬ 
pect to see the number 
of fatal accidents pro¬ 
gressively reduced. 

The airplane needs 
neither roads nor rails. 
No stretch of water or 
wilderness can bar its 
way. The surveyor or 
engineer can view from 
the clouds the living 
map of the country 


In 


. , , , , . . . This map shows the routes of the first flights across the Atlantic. 

AlCOCk, and ms Amen- May, 1919, the United States Navy seaplane, the NC-4, after flying from 
non novio-otnr T imit Rockaway to Halifax and from Halifax to Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, 

LcU1 iittv , x^ieut. fl ew to the Azores, and from the Azores to Lisbon, completing the journey 

Arthur W. Brown, “hop- on May 27. This was the first flight ever made by man across any of where the future railway 
i flitf -nt i the great oceans. A few days later, on June 14, Captain Alcock and ... T .» . 

ped Off irom A ewiound- Lieutenant Brown “hopped off” from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and took Will pass. Lite - Saving 

lnnd nn Tnnp 14 1Q1Q the route shown, completing the first “non-stop” flight across the ocean, rrpW a pnn spoilt, for VPS- 
lana Oil dune lJU, Some time before> Harry G- Hawker, an Englishman, tried to cross, but crew » ior veb 

and landed without hitch fell into the water after traveling 1,100 miles. He was fortunately picked sels in distress. Forest 
, • r 7 j r\r>r\ U P by a passing vessel. An interesting incident of the flight of Alcock , , , c , 

OT Stop m 1 relana, l,abU and Brown was that during a fog they turned over and sailed along with rangers Can detect forest 

miles away, in 16 hours the machin ,l„ u ?fL d ! v . dl ?.! , "u"L til t iuL‘lr„ k AlA p , , „’! ) a ^Ltl,^ eemed ’ saw fires miles away. The 


and 12 minutes. 

These various achievements demonstrated conclu¬ 
sively that the war had brought the airplane to a 
high point of mechanical development and that as a 
flying device it was ready for commercial use. Con¬ 
sequently, attention turned to the other features 
of flight—landing fields, maps, and “air laws.” 

Today nearly all cities of 
importance in Europe and 
America are equipped with 
airplane landing fields, and 
governments are rapidly 
laying out aerial highway 
systems, with maps show¬ 
ing the landmarks, ground 
stations, and other facilities 
for official and private lines. 

Laws have been drawn up to 
govern air traffic and regulate 


the sea above them. Then they righted themselves. 


doctor, the missionary, 
and the explorer can reach with ease the remot¬ 
est haunts of savagery. The statesman and the man 
of business can visit distant points in person with¬ 
out the loss of precious time. If the progress of 
the world is to be measured, as a great man has 
suggested, by the agencies which bring men closer 

together, then the airplane 
has already won a high 
place in the history of 
civilization. 





THE FIRST MACHINE 
TO FLY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 



....i 

tt are looking at the famous NC-4 seaplane of the United States Navy, the first flying machine to cross the Atlantic. The thing about 

^paolanes that enables them to float when at their moorings or when obliged to land in the water for a short time is the pontoon, on 
h’ h vnti see a figure “4.” On either side of the pontoon and suspended from the lower part of the biplanes are boat-shaped hollow floats 

WfllCn you o « . « I i_ _ 4kn tnn f«r fVierr nrorrortf +U & urirtcr frnm HiTinina lltlHpr ThrPP cpanlonpe cforfed nn fViio hlcfnrir 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

63 















AIRPLANE 


Stream-Line Construction 



Ho w the Air 

T EARNING to run an airplane requires no extra- 
ordinary skill. Any man or woman with good 
eyesight, cool judgment, and a “sense of balance” can 
acquire the art in a short time. The best and safest 
altitudes for flying are above 3,000 feet, because, if 
anything goes wrong and the plane starts to fall, the 
aviator has a better chance to get his machine under 
control again before it strikes the ground. The air 
currents are steadier also at high altitudes. The 
stability of a properly handled airplane was established 
for all time by certain daring American flyers who 
leaped down from one plane to the back of another, 


plane Wor k s 

One of the things we notice as we compare early 
ships with modern ships, early trains with modern 
trains, early motor-cars with modern motor-cars, is 
that the outline becomes more graceful all the time. 
It is not merely that men are trying to make these 
things look more beautiful, but that they find out by 
experience that graceful lines are usually the best 
lines possible for these vehicles. A round stone will 
glide through the air better than a square one; the 
air resists it less. And so what are called the ‘ * stream¬ 
lines” of an airplane are very important. Any 
rapidly moving object tends to leave an “air-hollow” 



Fig. 1. The Graceful Lines of the Airplane 


while the two were traveling among the clouds. 

The following explanation and pictures will show 
that the methods of airplane construction and control 
are comparatively simple. 

For any subject not found in its 


or vacuum behind it. When an airplane pushes its 
way forward, it finds itself pulled backward by the 
suction of the vacuum it creates. The problem is to 
enable the air pushed aside in front to flow away 

alphabetical place see information 



























AIRPLANE 


j Anatomy of the Airplane 




Fig. 2. The Airplane Comes Towards Us—the Flying Motor-Car Looking Almost Like Two Blades of Grass 


behind the machine as smoothly as possible, and so 
the parts of the airplane are all rounded and tapered 
off finely to enable this to happen. 

In Fig. 2 the airplane is flying directly at us as we 
look at it, the propeller being practically invisible ow¬ 
ing to the high speed at which it is revolving. We see 
how splendidly con¬ 
structed the airplane is 
for flying through the air 
so as to meet as little 
resistance as possible, and 
consequently to achieve 
the highest possible speed. 

The structure of the 
airplane is shown in this 
skeleton (Fig. 3) of its prin¬ 
cipal parts. The small 
but powerful engine is 
fixed into a steel frame 
in front of the body, and 
the little projecting shaft 
in front of it carries the 
propeller. The engine 
shown here is of the rotary 
or “Gnome” type, which 
was specially invented for 
use in airplanes, and is 
still used in some of the 
fastest machines. The 
long central body of the 
airplane is here uncovered, 
and we see how it is built 
up of long rods, called 
longerons, which taper off 
towards the tail-end and 
are joined at the rudder. 

They are held in their 
places by cross struts fastened on with flat steel 
clips, and gripped by wires fastened from corner 
to corner, so that the whole body, called the fuselage, 
is put together in the style of a somewhat flexible 
boxlike girder. Part of one of the wings also called 
planes or aerofoils—is given to show how they are 

contained in the Easy Reference 


made; they are generally made so that they can be 
removed for convenience. The upper planes are 
fixed to the section over the pilot’s seat. The 
spars and ribs of the wings give great strength 
with flexibility. The spars run the whole length. 
The whole framework of the wings and the fuselage 


is covered with strong linen painted with special var¬ 
nish or “dope,” which shrinks the cloth until it is 
drawn tight like a drum. It is proof against rain 
and snow and oil and gasoline. It is important that 
the wings should not be flat, and, as the word 'plane 
means “flat,” it is a confusing word to use. The 

Fact-Index at the end of this wor k 

65 


























AIRPLANE 


The Pilot’s Cockpit 


wings really curve downward a little. But you will 
notice that the upper surface of each wing has a shape 
quite different from/the lower' surface. It curves up 
in a sort of hump before turning downward. This is 
to increase the vacuum which has so much to do with 
the lifting power of a!n 
airplane’s wings. The air 
strikes this hump and is 
forced upward in a high 
curved arch, inside of 
which is the vacuum. 

The upper wings of a 
biplane are set farther 
forward than the lower 
wings, so the rush of air 
from their under surface 
will not interfere with 
the vacuum created by 
the planes beneath. 

The framework of air¬ 
planes may be of spruce 
wood or of steel tubing. 

Experiments are constant¬ 
ly being made to construct 
all-metal planes, and at 
least one machine of this 
kind, a monoplane, has 
been very successful. 

In the pilot’s cockpit 
(Fig. 4) a man sits and flies 
for his life. All that the world means to him depends 
upon these handles and wires about him. Beside him, 
at his fingers’ ends, is the little pump for keeping up 
pressure in the gasoline tank, and just in front of this 
is the lever controlling the sparking apparatus for 
starting or stopping the engine. In front of this is 


gasoline. On the instrument-board in front is a 
clock on the left, then the air-speed indicator, then 
the gasoline and lubricating oil gauges, then the 
altimeter for showing the height, then the compass. 
In front of the pilot is the all-important control-lever, 


or “stick,” which moves forwards and backwards and 
from side to side. Wires attached directly to it con¬ 
trol the rise and fall of the airplane; its forward and 
backward movements control the elevators which 
govern the ascending and descending; and its side to 
side movements cause the lift and dip of the wings. 



Fig. 4. The Pilot’s Cockpit and the Instruments that Guide and Guard Him 

Through the Clouds 



Fig. 5. The Rudder of the Airplane and How It is Controlled 


the speed-indicator for the engine, called the “tach¬ 
ometer.” It tells how many revolutions the engine 
is making each minute, the average being about 1,400. 
At the pilot’s right is the throttle which controls the 
engine speed by checking or increasing the flow of 


The foot-bar (see also Fig. 5) controls the rudder. 

In Fig. 5 we see the working of the rudder, which 
acts like the rudder of a boat. The pilot here is pushing 
the rudder-bar with his right foot, so that the rudder 
turns to the right. The air pressure on the right side 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

66 


















of the rudder causes the tail-fin to move to the left, the need may be. At each end of the wings is a 
and the nose of the airplane turns to the right. movable flap such as we observe in Fig. 7. They 

We have not yet realized how adaptable the air- are called ailerons, and their business is to act as 



Fig. 7. The Method of Controlling the Wings in Banking to the Right 

plane must be to the call of the wind. It must be rudders to the neighboring parts of the wing. They 

fine and strong in all its parts, it must be smooth and are worked by the side-to-side motion of the control 

easy against the air, it must be rigid or flexible, as lever, and they are all-important in the difficult busi- 

containe d in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

67 














1 AIRPLANE 


‘Ups” and “Downs” of the Airman 



Fig. 8. The Pilot Ascends —How the Elevator Flaps are Pulled Up 


ness of what is called “banking” in the air (Fig. 6). 
As the airplane turns to the right, the left wing rises 
while the right wing drops. The machine is “banking 
to the right.” Unless the movement is accompanied 
by turning the rudder also to the right, the machine 
will “side-slip” toward the ground, just as it will 
“skid” if the rudder is turned without banking. 
Both movements are necessary to a proper turn. 

Figs. 8 and 9 show how the aviator makes the 
machine ascend and descend. When the control- 
lever is pulled backward (Fig. 8) the crossed wires pull 
up the elevator flaps at the tail of the machine. This 
forces the tail down, so that the nose of the airplane 
points upward and the machine rises. In Fig. 9 the 
reverse process is shown. 

We should note in Fig. 10 how the tail-fins and the 
rudder are made. This picture gives a closer view 
of the rudder with the cover off. The rudder is the 
piece on the right, and it is worked by wires operated 



tau. *k»o 
Fig. 10. The Rudder 



Fig. 9. The Pilot Descends — How the Elevator 
Flaps are Depressed 


from the pilot’s seat. It swings on the steel stern post 
at the end of the fuselage, where the upper and lower 
pairs of longerons meet. Below, attached to the 
lower longerons by steel springs, is a protecting skid, 
upon which the tail is safely supported when the air¬ 
plane comes down. 

An airplane is like a man—it must be fit if it is to 
do its best. All its parts must respond instantly to 
the touch of the pilot, and the “tuning up,” as the 


men call it, is exceedingly important. Jolting over 
uneven ground and the stress and strain of flight may 



Fig. 11. Tumbuckles for “Tuning Up” 


loosen important wires, which must be tested and 
tightened before every flight. Each wire, therefore, 
is provided with what is called a turnbuckle, as shown 
in Fig. 11. This fragment shows two turnbuckles 
attached to guy-wires on both sides of a strut rest¬ 
ing on a spar supporting the upper wing. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alp habetical 


68 


place see information 














AIR PLANTS 


AKRON 


AlR PLANTS. Plants which attach themselves to 
trees or other support instead of growing from roots 
in the ground are called air plants ( Epiphytes ). Unlike 
parasitic plants, they obtain no food from the object 
on which they are seated, but depend on the dust that 
blows and collects about them, and on the moisture 
from the dews, fogs, and rains. This peculiar habit 
has led to the mistaken popular belief that they live 
on air alone. The work of gathering water is generally 
performed by the leaves. 

Most air plants live in the tropical regions of the 
earth, especially in the warm moist shady forests 
along the Equator. Sometimes the trees of such a 
forest are so covered with them that their trunks and 
branches are entirely hidden. Most of the air plants 
in these regions are bromelias, orchids, and ferns (see 
Orchids). In the northern latitudes the group is 
represented by such small forms of plant life as the 
mosses, liverworts, and lichens. 

One of the best known of the wild air plants is the 
Spanish moss of the southern United States. It is 
not a moss, however, but one of the bromelias, a true 
seed plant. It hangs in long gray masses from the 
branches of trees. 

AlSNE (an) RIVER. When a big man attacks a little 
man, expecting to beat him easily, and finds that 
unexpectedly the little man not only stands up to the 
attack but even hurls back his assailant, what should 
the big man do? This was the question that presented 
itself to the Germans in France, in 1914, when they 
had been pushed back by the first battle of the Marne 
and found themselves at the Aisne River. They could 
not go forward and they would not go back. Yet the 
cost in men of open warfare was too great to be met. 
So they did a thing which altered the whole conduct 
of the war; they dug themselves into the ground. 
Perhaps the character of the hills beside the Aisne 
River, which are rugged and pierced by many stone 
quarries, suggested the idea to them. The French, 
facing them across the shallow river, were forced to 
do the same. And there they stayed. 

Yet each side, finding itself held on this line, tried 
to outflank the other, to get around the end of the 
fortified ground. To prevent this it was necessary to 
extend the systems of trenches farther and farther, at 
first northward to the sea and afterwards southward 
to the Swiss border, so that in a short while the 
whole line across France was set rigidly—“stabilized” 
they call it—because of this battle of the Aisne. 

This was the beginning of the trench warfare that 
lasted four long years and accomplished so little. In 
the spring of 1918 the Germans, seeing no end to this 
bloody situation, made a desperate attempt to break 
through again and reach Paris. They struck first to 
the northward. Then, being held there, they began 
the second battle of the Aisne. Again they passed the 
river and reached the Marne, at Chateau-Thierry. 
And again the French, this time with the aid of 
American troops, turned them back. But this time 
the Germans, having started to retreat, could not stop 


at the Aisne, but were swept clear out of the valley 
and soon afterwards clear out of France in the final 
victory for the Allies. 

So the Aisne River, although it is a narrow shallow 
stream only 175 miles long, is now one of the famous 
rivers of the world, and its valley the last resting place 
of many thousands of brave soldiers. It flows along 
the western edge of the Argonne Forest, where the 
Americans fought so gallantly. Then it turns west¬ 
ward, passing north of Reims, where it gathers up the 
Vesle River, runs through the city of Soissons, and 
empties near Compiegne into the Oise, and so into 
the Seine. As a river it is quite unimportant, but so 
long as the World War is remembered the Aisne River 
will be a symbol of blood and of heroism. 

A'JAX. Next to Achilles in strength and bravery 
among the Greek warriors was Ajax, the son of Tela¬ 
mon, known as Ajax the Great. He led the men of 
Salamis in 12 ships against Troy. Homer in the 
‘Iliad’ describes him as of gigantic stature, “shaking 
his far-shadowing spear” and bearing his “tower-like 
shield of bronze, overlaid with sevenfold ox-hide.” 
He was the “bulwark of the Greeks” and struck 
terror into the hearts of the Trojans. At the death 
of Achilles, Ajax as the bravest of the Greeks claimed 
his armor, but he was forced to contend for it with 
Odysseus (Ulysses), and the latter won the prize. 
So enraged was Ajax that he went insane and killed 
himself. The story of his madness and death is told 
by Sophocles in the tragedy ‘Ajax’. 

Another Greek hero who bore the same name was the son 
of Oileus, king of Locris, and was known as the “lesser” Ajax. 
He was small of stature, but was brave and skilled in throw¬ 
ing the spear, and was next to Achilles in swiftness of foot. 
He was boastful and arrogant, however, and was punished 
for defying the gods by being wrecked and drowned on the 
return voyage from Troy. Like the Telamonian Ajax, he 
was the enemy of Odysseus. 

Akron (ak'ron), Ohto. Out of the smoke of vast 
factories, through wide straight streets flanked by 
the comfortable homes of thousands of workmen, 
winds the “romance of rubber,” which is the life of 
the great industrial district of Akron, Ohio. Not that 
Akron lives by rubber alone, but that this is the big 
distinctive industry which makes Akron the “rubber 
capital” of the world and tripled its population 
between 1910 and 1920. 

The tires on which bicycles and automobiles run, 
the hose that extinguishes fires and waters our 
gardens, the band that snaps around your note-book, 
the elastic tissue that the dentist fits painfully around 
your tooth, the giant bag of the army balloon—all 
were born under the Equator, but adapted to man’s 
use in Akron, Ohio. Other important industries of 
Akron are the manufacture of clay products, cereals, 
motor trucks, implements, and fishing tackle. 

Akron is situated 35 miles southeast of Cleveland on the 
Ohio Canal. Surrounding this busy industrial center is a 
region of great natural beauty, dotted with many small 
lakes. The town was settled about 1818, but its growth 
dates from the building of the canal in 1825. It was once 
the home of John Brown, the abolitionist. Population, 
about 210,000. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hi* 

69 


work 






ALABAMA 



The HEART of the NEW INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 


A labama. The “Cot¬ 
ton State,” as Alabama 
is sometimes called, is one 
of the five Gulf States, 
lying between Mississippi 
on the west and Georgia 
on the east. It is sep¬ 
arated from Tennessee on 


deposits of iron ore occur 
in close proximity to the 

Features .—In north and east, mountains (Lookout and Kac- 1 . j + t or l, rQri 

Mountains, continuation of Appalachian system, highest COal, and tHe great advan- 
tion 2,500 feet) descending into rolling uplands (Cumberland £ a gg 0 f these great COal and 


the north by the 35th par¬ 
allel. To the south lies Florida, except for a strip 50 
miles long which extends to the Gulf of Mexico 
and includes Mobile Bay. Some writers say that 
the name Alabama is an Indian word meaning “here 
we rest,” others that it is another form for Alibamu, 
a tribe of Creek Indians who once inhabited the state. 

The climate and the 


Extent .—North and south, 336 miles; east and west, 200 miles. Area, 

51,998 square miles. Population (1920 census), 2,348,174. 

Natural Features .—In north and east, mountains (Lookout and Rac¬ 
coon Mo 

elevation . _ _ . 

Plateau and Piedmont region) to northwest and southeast; in center . . . . 

and south, coastal plain. Chief rivers: Mobile, formed by junction ore deposits lying SO Close 
of Alabama and Tombigbee; Tennessee River (crpsses the northern L no •ii.- 

part of the state); Chattahoochee (part of boundary with Georgia). tOgeiner nas W1U11I1 uie 
Principal Cities .—Birmingham (population 180,000); Montgomery 
(capital, 45,000); Mobile (chief seaport, 60,000). 

Chief Products .—Cotton and cotton goods; iron and steel; coal and 
coke; lumber and timber products; corn, cereals, fruits, and tobacco. 


rich black soil of 
Alabama are favorable 
to the growth of a wide 
range of agricultural 
products, and before 
the development of its 
vast mineral resources 
Alabama was chiefly 
an agricultural state. 

Even today more than 
half the area is farm¬ 
land, and cotton is the 
most valuable product. 

Other important crops 
are corn, oats, wheat, 
hay, peanuts, tobacco, 
potatoes, and sugar¬ 
cane. Fruits, melons, 
and other vegetables 
are cultivated exten¬ 
sively in the uplands, 
and the foothills of the 
northeast afford excel¬ 
lent pasturage. Cattle 
and hog raising, until 
recently neglected, is 
becoming an important 
source of profit. Near 
the Gulf, oranges and 
other citrus fruits are beginning to be cultivated. 

The iron and coal industry of Alabama is of great 
economic importance. In the north central part are 
rich deposits of iron and coal, which rank among the 
most important in the United States. The coal 
formations, which cover more than half the state, 
were discovered as early as 1834, and since 1880 many 
extensive mines have been opened. This is the 
southern end of the coal area of the Appalachian 
coal region, which includes the great coal fields of 
Ohio and Pennsylvania; and Alabama now ranks 
high in coal production. In the production of coke 
Alabama ranks second among the states. Extensive 


ALABAMA’S WEALTH FROM SOIL, MINE, AND FACTORY 


past 30 or 40 years brought 
Alabama from a purely 
agricultural state to one 
of the chief manufacturing sections of the country 
with Birmingham as its center. In North Birm¬ 
ingham is one of the few large puzzolan cement 
factories in the United States. 

Excellent marbles in a variety of colors occur in 
large quantities, and deposits of limestone, chalk, 

clay and shale suitable 
for the manufacture of 
cement exist through¬ 
out the state. About 
one-half the graphite 
mined in the United 
States is produced 
in Alabama, and there 
are valuable deposits 
of bauxite, from which 
aluminum is made. 
Porcelain clay, tile and 
building clays, slate, 
asphalt, phosphate 
silica, fuller’s earth, 
barytes, mineral 
waters, natural gas, and 
\\ j ji petroleum occur in 

\ v - 1 sma11 but paying de “ 

\ v ^ // ■ ' r°// posits - 

\ / tj iv? // Alabama is made up 

3£ O' / of three great regions— 

v'C 7 § the coastal plain, the 

/J ' piedmont or upland 

m region, and the moun- 

^ r Q.nufactui' eS tains. In the northern 

, .... , and east central part, 

The distribution of Alabama’s chief products according to value is shown , , ^ tj • i 

in this chart. The state’s marvelous industrial progress in recent years Wliere tile TSIue rtldge 


has put its manufactures slightly ahead of its farm and mine products 
combined, but even today Alabama is one of the greatest cotton-growing states. 


of the Appalachians 
has its southern ex¬ 
tremities, the scenery is diversified and picturesque. 
The mountains take the form of flat-topped hills, which 
at no point exceed 2,500 feet, and terminate in foot¬ 
hills and sand mountains toward the center of the 
state. The most prominent are Raccoon and Look¬ 
out mountains. It was on the northern end of 
Lookout Mountain that one of the great battles of the 
Civil War was fought. 

To the east and south of the mountain region is 
the piedmont region of rolling uplands, and to the 
northwest is the southern end of the Cumberland 
Plateau, which is broken into flat tablelands by the 
valley of the Tennessee River and other rivers. In 









WHERE ALABAMA’S RICHES LIE 



The wealth, the industrial and educational enterprise, and the high civic spirit of Alabama are here typified in a few examples. These 
pictures speak to the eye of her rich soil, her marble quarries, her coal mines, the great steel mills at Birmingham, the cotton which 
she not only raises but weaves into cotton cloth in her many busy factories. Every variety of product of orchard, garden, and field 

is grown in this genial climate. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

71 



























ALABAMA 


Alabama in History 




this varied region of hills and valleys lie the coal and 
iron deposits. 

The remaining three-fifths of the state belongs to 
the coastal region. Across the center where northern 
upland and southern 
plain come together 
lies a belt of rich dark 
soil of great depth and 
fertility. This is the 
famous Black Belt, 
where the great fields 
of cotton are grown, 
although cotton is pro¬ 
duced more or less in all 
parts of the state. 

South of this the 
coastal plain slopes 
gradually to the south¬ 
west, with limestone 
ridges, sometimes 10 
or 12 miles wide, at 
irregular intervals. 

Extending back 150 
miles from the Gulf are 
valuable timber lands, 
of long-leaf yellow pine 
and other woods, which 
supply not only lum¬ 
ber, but tar, turpen¬ 
tine, and resin. 

The numerous rivers, 
never closed by ice, 
afford 1,500 miles or 
more of navigable 
stream. In mileage of 
navigable waters 
Alabama is richer than 
any other southern 
state, and it is one of 
the four great river 
states in the Union. A 
prosperous commerce 
was developed in the 
rivers at an early date. 

The Tennessee, which 
is navigable every¬ 
where in Alabama ex¬ 
cept near Florence—and there a canal has been built 
around Muscle Shoals—gives an outlet to the Ohio, 
and the enormous water-power of the Muscle Shoals, 
when fully developed by great dams and other 
works, will afford a source of hydroelectric power 
whose potentialities are as yet little realized. 

The construction of great government nitrate 
plants here during the World War was the beginning 
of a long-cherished project to make Muscle Shoals 
the “Niagara of the South.” 

The chief river basin of the state is the Mobile, 
formed by the junction of the Alabama and Tom- 
bigbee rivers, both sluggish, crooked streams which 


join about 45 miles from the sea and empty into 
Mobile Bay. This bay forms one of the best harbors 
of the Gulf of Mexico, and the government maintains 
a 30-foot channel through the 36 miles of its length. 

About one-half the 
boundary between Ala¬ 
bama and Georgia is 
formed by the Chatta¬ 
hoochee River. The 
Perdido River separates 
the lower part of Ala¬ 
bama from Florida and 
empties into Perdido 
Bay, which was form¬ 
erly a famous resort of 
pirates and filibusters. 

Most of the great 
railway systems are in 
the northern part of 
the state, where they 
tap the mineral de¬ 
posits. Alabama was 
one of the pioneer 
states in railroad build¬ 
ing and had the first 
system west of the 
Allegheny Mountains, 
built in 1830. The rails 
were iron bars laid on 
wooden stringers and 
the cars were drawn by 
mules. 

The climate of 
Alabama, although 
warm, is especially de¬ 
lightful in the northern 
mountainous regions. 
Snow falls only occa¬ 
sionally, but there are 
heavy rainfalls usually 
in February and the 
months just following. 

The population of 
Alabama has advanced 
steadily but not rapid¬ 
ly since its admission 
to the Union in 1819. 
Over 80 per cent live in rural districts. After Birm¬ 
ingham the largest cities are Mobile and Montgomery. 
Alabama has long been notable for the small number 
of its foreign-born inhabitants, but the number has 
increased with the advance of manufacturing. Today 
Alabama is not merely a great iron and steel manu¬ 
facturing state, but is also an important center for 
cotton manufacture, ranking fifth in the amount of 
cotton used. Besides iron and cotton goods, the prin¬ 
cipal manufactured products are lumber, cottonseed 
oil and cake, fertilizers, turpentine, resin, brick and tile. 

Separate schools are maintained for the white and 
colored children and the public fund is applied in 


RELIEF MAP OF ALABAMA 


Principal Religious Denominations 


Snowing highlands and lowlands, rivers, chief railroads, chief cities, and pro¬ 
duction areas. The chart below indicates the relative strength of the 
principal religious denominations. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical pi ace see information 

72 
























♦ALABAMA’ CLAIM S 

proportion to the two classes of schools. There are 
six state normal schools for whites and one for negroes. 
The state university is located at Tuscaloosa, and at 
Auburn is the Polytechnic Institute. Tuskegee In¬ 
stitute for the education of negroes (coeducational) 
is one of the largest educational institutions in the 
state and the largest in the world for negroes. 

The History of Alabama 

The Spaniard De Soto had crossed the state in 1542, 
with his knights, priests, and crossbowmen, when searching 
for the storehouse of wealth which tradition said lay to the 
west of Florida. The first settlement was made at Mobile 
Bay, in 1702, by the French under Sieur de Bienville, called 
the “Father of Alabama.” But the early settlers were 
adventurers, not laborers, and the French colony did not 
succeed until after 1721, when three slaveships brought 
slaves to Mobile. The French title was ceded to Great 
Britain in 1763. Many English and Scotch settlers were 
found before the Revolutionary War in this region, which 
was included in the English colony of Georgia, founded in 
1732. In 1779 Spain seized the Mobile country, to which 
it had claims. Spain’s title was finally disposed of in favor 
of the United States in 1813. The Territory of Alabama 
was organized in 1817 and admitted as a state two years later. 

During the War of 1812 the whites at Fort Mims, near 
the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, were 
massacred by Creek Indians. General Andrew Jackson a 
few months afterwards attacked the Creeks in their fortified 
position on the Tallapoosa, 20 miles north of Montgomery, 
and almost annihilated the tribe. Afterwards a treaty was 
made with the surviving Indians by which most of their 
tribal lands in Alabama and Mississippi were surrendered. 

Alabama seceded from the Union on Jan. 11, 1861. 
Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy and 
Selma was made the leading Confederate arsenal and ship¬ 
ping yard. The Tennessee Valley was occupied by Union 
forces early in 1862. The Confederate fleet in Mobile Bay 
was destroyed by Farragut in 1864 and the forts retaken, 
and the whole state was reoccupied in April 1865. The 
“carpet-bag” rule which followed almost bankrupted the 
state; but these conditions have long since passed away. 

Alabama has had six constitutions. The sixth and last 
constitution, framed and ratified at the polls in 1901 after 
severe opposition, practically disfranchised nine-tenths of 
the negro voters through what is known as the “grand¬ 
father clause” and other provisions. 

‘ALABAMA’ CLAIMS. The steam cruiser Alabama, 
built in an English shipyard, was allowed through the 
negligence of the British government to put to sea 
(July 29, 1862) in spite of warnings by the American 
minister, Charles Francis Adams, that it was intended 
as a warship for the Confederate government. For 
two years the Alabama ranged the oceans, destroying 
Northern merchantmen, until it was finally sunk by 
the United States cruiser Kearsarqe, on June 19, 1864. 
After long discussions, the British government agreed 
to submit to arbitration the claims to damages arising 
out of the Alabama case. The five arbitrators met 
at Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1871. After 
hearing evidence they decided that Great Britain had 
not exercised “due diligence” in permitting the 
Alabama to escape, and awarded to the United States 
$15,500,000 damages. This ended a dispute which 
threatened to disturb the friendly relations between 
the two countries. It was also a great victory for 
the principle of the peaceable settlement of inter¬ 
national disputes by arbitration (see Arbitration). 


ALARIC 

Alamo ( a'la-md ). A fortified Franciscan mission in 
what is now San Antonio, Tex. Here, about 180 
Texans were besieged by a Mexican force from Feb. 
23 to March 6, 1836, and all but six (three women, 
two children, and a negro boy) perished. (See Texas.) 
Al'ARIC (370?-410). For 800 years—since the days 
of Brennus and his Gauls—Rome had not known the 
tread of a foreign conqueror. But again a barbarian 
foe, the mighty hordes of Alaric the West Goth, 
flushed with 15 years of plundering, was thundering 
at the gates of the imperial capital. 

For a hundred years the might of the empire had 
slowly ebbed, while fierce tribes from north of the 
Danube wrought their will within its borders. Hon- 
orius the feeble Emperor of the West had now shut 
himself within his marshy fastness of Ravenna, 
wasting his time on the care of pet chickens. 

Stilicho, Rome’s ablest general, though himself of 
barbarian blood, had twice checked the invader, once 
in the heart of Greece and again six years later on the 
banks of the Po in northern Italy. But Stilicho was 
now treacherously done to death by the cowardly 
Emperor’s orders, and Italy—and Rome—were 
defenseless. 

The people of Rome, facing starvation within their 
walls, tried to buy the German leader off. The ransom 
he demanded was so high that they said they could 
not pay it, and they threatened the Goth with their 
numbers. “The thicker the hay,” said Alaric grimly, 
“the easier it is mowed.” They persuaded him to 
reduce his demands to 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 
pieces of silver, together with gifts of pepper, scarlet 
skins, and silken tunics; and the siege of the city was 
lifted. When the Emperor safe in his swamp- 
protected retreat failed to pay the promised treasure, 
Alaric again besieged Rome. Treacherous to the last, 
Honorius employed a barbarian chieftain to attempt 
a surprise attack on the Goths. This failed, and for 
the third and last time Alaric was before the walls 
of the Eternal City. 

The Goths soon entered (410 a.d.), and for three 
days that city which had been “mistress of the world” 
was given over to plunder. The shock of its downfall 
ran through the whole world. 

Of the royal race of the Visigoths, or West Goths, Alaric 
had been elevated upon the shield and acclaimed king by 
his people, then living in ancient Thrace, in the year 395. 
Past the gates of Thermopylae and into the heart of Greece 
this fiery young chieftain had led his people, leaving its 
cities “like the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered 
victim.” For five years he had then tarried in Ulyricum, 
on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, re-equipping his men 
and preparing for more adventures. About the year 400 
he first led his nation to the assault of Italy. The fall of 
Rome came in 410 a.d. Alaric died the same year while in 
southern Italy, planning to lead his troops to further con¬ 
quests in the island of Sicily. According to legend his 
followers turned the River Busento from its course, and 
forced captives to dig a grave in its bed, wherein Alaric was 
buried. That no man might discover the tomb of their 
king the river was returned to its channel and the captives 
killed. Few men have had a stranger life than Alaric, and 
none a stranger burial. (See Goths.) 



contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

73 





ALASKA 


Uncle Sam’s Great 


Bargain I 


AMERICA’S TREASURE HOUSE of the North 


A LASKA. The Purchase 
of Alaska by the 
United States from Russia 
for $7,200,000 aroused a 
storm of indignation and 
ridicule. Nothing could 
be more foolish, it was 
argued, than to pay out 
good American gold for a mass of glaciers and frozen 
waste, as Alaska was then supposed to be. “Seward’s 
folly” became a byword, but the man who made the 
purchase—William H. Seward, then secretary of state 
—regarded this act as the greatest service of his life. 
Vast Profits on the Purchase 
Gold, it is true, was not found till a dozen years 
later, nor in profitable quantities for a generation. 
But since then more than forty times the purchase 


precious minerals remain 
to be wrested from the 
earth; but that there are 


Extent .—North and south, about 1,500 miles (latitude 54° 40' to 
71° 30' N.); east and west (including Aleutian Islands), more than 
5,100 miles. Area, 590,000 square miles (one-sixth of the United 
States). Population, about 29,000 whites; 26,000 natives. 

Natural Features .—Chief mountains: Coast Range, Chugach Moun- i j -j. e / • i j 

tains, Aleutian Range, Alaskan Range, Endicott Range. Highest large deposits OI till, leatl, 
peaks: Mt, McKinley (20,464 feet), Mt. St. Elias (18,024 feet). z j nc tungsten, chrome 
Chief river: Yukon (length, 1,500 miles). * 0 i *i 

Principal Towns .—Juneau (capital), Fairbanks, Anchorage, Nome, *->re, Sulphur, and Sliver IS 
Douglas, Sitka. known. Petroleum is 

Chief Products (in order of value).—Salmon, copper, gold, furs. probably there in Vast 

quantities, only awaiting government permission to 
be used; and water-power from swift glacial streams 
can be developed in unlimited quantities and trans¬ 
ported as electricity to distant fields. 

The fur seals, which for years furnished a revenue 
nearly as great as the gold mines, were threatened 
with extermination for a time, until the government 
in agreement with other nations placed severe re¬ 
strictions on their destruction. These seals inhabit 

four barren islets in the 
AN ALASKAN TOTEM POLE Bering Sea belonging to the 

United States known as the 
Pribilofs, and they are now 
watched and counted near¬ 
ly as carefully as if they 
were human beings. In 
1912 there were enumerated 
about 215,000; at the pre¬ 
sent time, as a result of 
restrictions on the killing, 
there are over 500,000. 

Forests of spruce some¬ 
times as much as six feet in 
diameter and 200 feet high 
are important for ship¬ 
building, while great areas 
of smaller-sized timber will 
help to solve the paper 
problem. There are blue¬ 
berries for a nation’s jam, 
strawberries taking first 
prize from the whole Pacific 
coast, and charming wild 
flowers that recall to the 
tourist the fate of the 
Russian discoverers who 
were threatened with im¬ 
prisonment for talk about 
“plants growing on ice.” 

These things, at 60 de¬ 
grees north latitude, are 
perhaps more striking than 
the great glaciers, moun¬ 
tains, and rivers. They 


price has been taken out of 
the land in gold alone, and 
the country has yielded a 
profit equally great from 
many other products. In 
40 years the fur seals have 
yielded over $50,000,000. 

The value of fish products, 
chiefly salmon, has been in 
some years as high as 
$60,000,000. Alaskan cop¬ 
per deposits are probably the 
richest and most extensive 
in the world, great enough 
to furnish the world’s entire 
supply. 

Coal, as yet, is mined for 
local use only, but it is 
reported by the government 
survey as lying in seven 
veins, one above another, 

250 feet deep. There are 
150 billions tons at the very 
least, more than the original 
supply of Pennsylvania, and 
this takes no account of 
what coal there may be in 
two-thirds of the country, 
which has never been pros¬ 
pected. 

What would be a fair 
price for Alaska today? 

Nobody knows, but if 
Russia still owned the terri¬ 
tory there is no doubt that 

she could demand at least jc ^ X W mean that grains and vege- 

1,000 times more than she His tribal totem is to an Alaskan Indian the animal symbol of tables and sraSSPS_enough 

^K+oinarl in 1SR7 Tt !□ the &roup to which each belongs. Thus it has something of the , - , 

OUiainea 111 loO/. Ibis nor relation of the Tammany tiger or the Republican elephant to a to teed any tuture population 
pvpti nnsjmhlp tn ctiipciq ■wViof' zealous party member in the United States. To the Indian, the _u.,~ gj i i 

even possiDie to guess wnat tribal totem stands for the animal ancestor from which he be ii’ eves —can be profitably grown; 

great and valuable quantl- his tribe is descended; it is connected with all his religious and for like Norwav Aliskn is 

social beliefs. Totem poles are used as monuments of important , » . _ . 

events and tombstones of the dead. a land Ot the Midnight Sun, 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

74 



ties of precious and semi- 








MAP STORY OF ALASKA 



The pictured map at the top shows graphically the chief natural features and some of the events in the history of Alaska. Bordering the 
Gulf of Alaska you see the magnificent mountain ranges which rise in many places precipitously from the sea. North of this Pacific coastal 
reeion with its many splendid harbors, is the broad Yukon plateau. In the far north is the great Endicott Range, whose foothills rise from 
the coastal plain bordering the Arctic Ocean. With the aid of the dotted lines you can trace the memorable voyages of Capt. Vitus Bering, 
an officer in the Russian navy who in 1728 discovered the strait that bears his name; and of Captain Cook, who in 1778 surveyed the coast 
almost continuously as far as Seward Peninsula. The sketch map below shows the location of the chief cities, rivers, and production areas. 

At the right is a chart showing how Alaska’s wealth is divided between minerals, fish, and furs. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

75 











ALASKA 


A Land of Big Things | 


A MID-WINTER BANQUET OF THE REINDEER 



This doesn’t look much like a dinner party, does it? Yet it is, in a way; for you see here one of the immense reindeer herds in Alaska 
eating the lichens and mosses, which are the only food to be found on the ground during the long hard winter. Where the ground is covered 
with snow, the reindeer scratch their way down to this food with their hoofs. Cattle, of course, have to be fed in the winter, but the reindeer 
can take care of themselves on this winter pasturage. The reindeer combines the services of the horse and the cow, and can be kept where 
the raising of cattle would be impracticable. There are several thousand deer in this herd. You can see the horizon is thick with them, and 

there are more over the hill. 


and during the summer the warm sunshine falls con¬ 
tinuously on ground that is frozen to within a foot 
or two of the surface. Grasses grow luxuriantly in 
the river bottoms and wild flowers abound. Even in 
the crevices of glaciers plants are found, and it is no 
wonder that the early Russian explorers were not be¬ 
lieved when they told such tales. 

The area of Alaska, 590,000 
square miles, is considerably 
larger than the 13 original states 
of the Union, and makes about 
one-sixth of the present United 
States. It is about equal in size 
to the 20 states which extend 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
St. Lawrence River, and from the 
Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi. 

The Aleutian Islands, a group 
of more than 150 islands strewn like stepping stones 
across the North Pacific from Alaska almost to the 
coast of Asia, are administered as a part of Alaska. 
Unimak Island, 65 miles long and 25 miles wide, is 
the largest. The native population of about 2,000 


is supported by fishing, basket-making, and fox¬ 
raising. 

The greatest mountain ranges, the highest peaks, 
and the most stupendous glaciers border on the Gulf 
of Alaska. Back of these chains lie great plateaus 
and tundras—swampy moss- and shrub-covered areas 
—through which flow the Yukon, 
1,500 miles from the Canadian 
border to the Bering Sea, and 
other splendid rivers. It was in 
the Yukon Territory that gold 
was first discovered, and to reach 
the rich placer fields the early 
prospectors had to make their way 
over difficult and dangerous moun¬ 
tain passes, enduring cold and 
hardship almost beyond belief. 
Chilkoot Pass will always be 
remembered as one of the most famous of these routes 
to the gold fields. 

North of the plateaus and tundras is still another 
mountain range, the Endicott, which is considerably 
lower; and bordering on the Arctic Ocean is a sandy 


THE SHETLAND PONY OF THE ARCTICS 



The genial “husky” between the shafts in this 
picture is probably an old dog who has been retired 
from the harder service of hauling freight, and 
devotes his time to amusing the children. 


THE GOOD OLD SUMMER-TIME IN ALASKA 



You hardly think of juicy cantelopes and cabbages in connection with Alaska, do you? But remember that while the summer is short, the 
days are long. The sun shines from fourteen to sixteen hours each day and 75 degrees temperature is not uncommon. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


76 


place 


see information 











The Climate of Alaska 


ALASKA 




them, Mt. Katmai, has been converted into the 
largest active crater in the world, a distinction 
hitherto held by Kilauea in the Hawaiian Islands. 

Just as Norway, lying partly within the Arctic 
circle, is preserved by warm currents of the Atlantic 
from cold too great for human existence, so the 
shores and much of the interior of Alaska are 
warmed and made habitable by the Japanese cur¬ 
rent. Sitka boasts that in January it is often as 
warm as Los Angeles; but on the other hand the 
average temperature in the Yukon basin, from 
December to March, is 20 degrees below zero. Still 
farther north the thermometer sometimes goes to 70 
degrees below. In the summer, in the same locality, 
it may be 90 degrees above—that is, as hot as it 
usually gets in the temperate zone of “the States.” 
Yet Denver and other places in the States are fre¬ 
quently as cold as ice-bound dog-sledding Nome. 

What Uncle Sam Has Done for the Natives 
The contact of the white race with inferior races 

of new lands has very 
frequently proved 
fatal to the native 
inhabitants. In 
Alaska the United 
States has demon¬ 
strated that it can 
rescue an inferior race 
from extinction. The 
United States Bureau 
of Education has 
checked the spread of 
white vices, and by 
education and the in¬ 
troduction of the 
reindeer it has given 


WHERE YOUNG ALASKA GOES TO SCHOOL 


This is one of the 
modest schoolhouses 
in Alaska that are 
doing so much for 
those little dark-faced 
brothers and sisters 
of ours, whom you see 
standing in front of 
the door. 

A THRIVING 
ALASKA TOWN 
Here we are looking 
down the main street 
of Cordova, a thriving 
Alaska town, the lo¬ 
cation of which is 
shown on the map on 
a previous page. The 
place looks trim and 
clean and wide awake; 
full of the pioneer and 
progressive spirit 
which characterizes 
this great, new, rich 
undeveloped section 
of Uncle Sam’s broad 
lands. Besides the 
land telegraph, as in¬ 
dicated by the poles, 
Cordova has a wire¬ 
less station. 


barren plain. Sitka is the center of that narrow 
strip of coast which, bordering on British Columbia, 
lies nearest “the States,” and this city is the destina¬ 
tion of most of the tourists. Along the greater part 
of the Gulf of Alaska the coast is broken by deep 
ravines like the Norwegian fiords, while back of 
these rise glacier-covered mountains in precipitous 
heights. The glaciers themselves cover a surface 
greater than all Switzerland. 

The ascent of Mt. McKinley, 20,464 feet, in the 
Alaskan Range is probably the most difficult moun¬ 
tain-climbing feat in America; but Mt. St. Elias and 
Mt. Logan (the latter just across the border in 
Yukon Territory) are nearly as high, and there are 
scores of peaks whose summits reach up two miles or 
more. Live volcanoes still exist in the Alaska and 
Aleutian ranges, and through recent eruptions one of 



UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSE AT EAGLE 
A mining camp on the Yukon, near the Canadian border. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

77 
























ALASKA 



Uncle Sam and the Reindeer 


WASHING OUT THE GOLD, BUT SPOILING THE SOIL 



This picture shows a typical Alaska landscape in which hydraulic mining is employed. Notice the great heap of soil spread out at the foot of 
the cliff and itself spreading out over the surrounding country, thus covering up a great deal of valuable soil with sand and gravel and making 
it unfit for use. In hydraulic mining a powerful stream of water is directed against a bank containing gold-bearing gravel. The gravel passes 
through a series of sluice boxes, in which the gold, being heavier, sinks to the bottom, while the gravel is carried on to be poured out on a 
pile of “tailings” like that at the foot of the bluff. Owing to the injury done to the soil this method of mining, which at one time did a great 
deal of damage in the Sacramento valley in California, has in that state been prohibited by law. In Alaska, where there is so much land and 

so few inhabitants, the wastefulness of the method is disregarded. 


the natives new means of livelihood. From the 
reindeer the Eskimos and other natives (principally 
Thlingits and Aleuts) get meat, milk, and hides; 
it also furnishes them with means of transportation, 
and the possession of a herd encourages thrift and 


industry. There were no reindeer in Alaska before 
the United States took possession, and the entire 
reindeer industry has grown up around the original 
herd of hardly more than 1,000 imported from 
Siberia. Now there are 100 times that number, and 


THE HARBOR OF UNALASKA 



This is the harbor of Unalaska, which is situated on the island of Unalaska, one of the Aleutian group. It is a port of call for ships going 
in and out of Bering Sea. The island is 135 miles from the end of the Alaskan peninsula. Unalaska is only a village, and its population 
is chiefly engaged in sealing and fishing. The island is very mountainous. It also has on it a volcano; indeed, all the islands of the 

Aleutian group are of volcanic origin. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

78 












The Four Historic Dates 


ALBANIA 


the income of the natives from the reindeer in a single 
year amounts to as much as $100,000. 

Alaskan history has four important dates: 1741, 1867, 
1898, and 1914. The first marks the arrival of the Russians, 
who came for the furs of the otter and the seal. They 
looked for gold and silver, but by a fortunate chance these 
discoveries were left for Americans. Under the iron rule 
of the Russians, the Aleuts, a gentle race of Indians living 
in the southern islands, were reduced in numbers from 
25,000 to barely 1,000, and this may be taken as typical of 
their severity and exploitation. In 1867 the Russians 
thought they could see the beginning of the end of the 


country’s resources, and so they sold the land to the United 
States. 

In 1898 the rush of the “forty-niners” to California was 
repeated in Alaska, when the Klondike (though this is in 
Canada) became the goal of seekers for quick and easy 
wealth. Nome, Fairbanks, and other places were soon on 
everybody’s tongue. In 1903 the Alaskan Boundary Com¬ 
mission settled a troublesome dispute between Great Britain 
and the United States in regard to the boundary line separat¬ 
ing Alaska and Canada. 

An event that should be set down as marking a new era 
in Alaskan affairs was the beginning of work on the govern¬ 
ment railroad from Seward to Fairbanks, in 1914. This 
471-mile project, carried through with the indomitable 
energy which marked the activities of Alaska’s early settlers, 
brings Alaska definitely into that world of industry for which 
it is so splendidly endowed. 

Alaska is an empire in the making; but its making is slow, 
partly because of the difficulty of building and maintaining 
railroads, and partly because of the difficulty of getting 
labor in that cold region. For the most part it is still a 
country of the stagecoach and the dog-sled, though it no 
longer has the wilderness aspect of the frontier. The popu¬ 
lation for a time actually declined. In 1910 there were 
40,000 whites, but in 1920 it was estimated that there were 
less than 30,000. The natives have advanced slowly in 
numbers in recent years, and there are probably about 
26,000 of them. 

Norway with fewer resources and a climate of no greater 
moderation has a population of 2,400,000—a population 
that is supported on an area only about one-fourth that of 
Alaska’s. But with great stores of minerals, with plenty 
of coal for heat and smelting processes, and with the possi¬ 


bility of developing a great food supply aside from the 
fisheries, Alaska’s destiny is assured. 

Alaska has a territorial form of government with its own 
legislature and makes its own local laws; but the governor 
is appointed by the president of the United States. Its one 
delegate in Congress has a right to speak, but no vote. 
ALBANIA (dl-bd'ni-a). The mountainous country 
of Albania, little larger than the state of Vermont, 
has been well called the “stepchild of Europe,” for it 
has been a boae of contention among the neighboring 
nations ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. 

The country, situated in the 
western Balkans, on the 
eastern coast of the Adri¬ 
atic, is a Balkans in minia¬ 
ture, for within its borders 
it shows all the geographical 
differences of mountain and 
valley, of racial and relig¬ 
ious animosity, which char¬ 
acterize the Balkans as a 
whole, the storm center of 
Europe. Despite their fierce 
love of independence, the 
Albanians have never 
achieved national unity. 
Tribe is perpetually at war 
with tribe, and the code of 
the feud is the supreme law. 
Two-thirds of the popula¬ 
tion of about 850,000 are 
Mohammedans, and the rest 
are Christians of the Roman 
Catholic and Greek Ortho¬ 
dox churches (see map under Balkan Peninsula). 

The history of this little country dates back to 
before the days of the Roman Empire, for the Albani¬ 
ans are descendants of the oldest race in Europe, the 
ancient Illyrians and Epirotes, with an intermixture 
of Slavic and Turkish blood brought in by wave upon 
wave of barbarian invasions. Their great national 
hero is George Scanderbeg (1403-1467), who main¬ 
tained a guerilla warfare against the Turkish invaders 
for nearly 25 years. His name is a corruption of the 
title Iskender Bey (Prince Alexander) bestowed on 
him by the Turks. Handed over in his youth as a 
hostage to the Mohammedans, he was promoted to 
high military command; but when opportunity came 
he revolted and gathered the Albanian clansmen 
around him in their mountain fastnesses. But the 
unity he created perished with him, and soon after 
his death Albania fell under Turkish dominion. 

Again and again the liberty-loving clansmen rose 
against their oppressors; but the Turkish yoke was 
not finally shaken off until 1912, when Albania was 
recognized as an independent state. A few months 
later a German prince, William of Wied, was made 
ruler, but was forced by his subjects to flee at the 
outbreak of the World War of 1914-18, and war and 
anarchy followed. In 1917 the independence of 


WHERE ASIA AND ALASKA MEET 



Ages ago North America and Asia are supposed to have been one continuous land across what is 
now Bering Strait and Bering Sea. You remember from your geography lessons what a sunken 
coast looks like, don’t you? And you can see the marks of such a coast in the irregular outline in 
deep indentations of these two coasts. As the land sank and the sea came in to separate the two 
continents, these ragged shores were formed. The northern limit of the icebergs and of the cereajs 
is determined by the warm Japan current. Notice also the international date line, where today is 
yesterday on one side of the line, and yesterday is today. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hi 


s work 


79 




















ALBATROSS^ 


[alba n~y 

Albania was again proclaimed and a provisional gov¬ 
ernment was set up at Durazzo. 

ALBANY, N. Y. As the capital of the most populous 
state in the Union, and as the second oldest settle¬ 
ment in the original 13 colonies, the old Dutch city 
of Albany would be an interesting and important 
place, even without the flourishing commerce and 
industry which have made it conspicuous for nearly 
three centuries. The city is picturesquely located on 
the right bank of the Hudson River, 145 miles north 
of New York City. If you ascend the Hudson on 
one of the large steamers for which Albany is the head 
of navigation, you will be impressed by the beautiful 
new waterfront—about three miles of piers and 
warehouses of brick and concrete. As you go back 
from the river the land soon begins to rise in a long 
vigorous slope, and at the top of the great hill, where 
was the fort of the colonial town, is now the great 
marble state capitol. 

The capitol building presides not only over the city 
but over the entire neighboring valley. Its size, its 
situation, and the dignity of its architecture combine 
to make it impressive. Built of white Maine granite, 
it is 300 feet wide, 400 feet long, and covers more 
than three acres. The building was begun in 1871 and 
by the time it was completed in 1904 the cost had 
mounted to $25,000,000. The great western stair¬ 
case—said to be the finest staircase in the world— 
alone cost $2,000,000. This is only one of the fine 


population increased by leaps and bounds, but when 
through rail routes were established to the west its 
importance as a freight center began to decline. It is 
still, however, an important transfer point for pas¬ 
senger, express, and mail traffic. 

Beautiful examples of Dutch and colonial archi¬ 
tecture in the residence section testify to Albany’s 
long history. In 1614 some Dutch traders settled 
on the island just below the present location. Ten 
years later they moved across the river and built 
Fort Orange. The settlement was on the grant of land 
given to Killian Van Rensselaer by the Dutch govern¬ 
ment, and the place was named “Beverwyck”; but 
when it came into the hands of the British, in 1664, 
it was christened “Albany” for the Duke of York 
and Albany, who later became King James II. 

In 1754 the famous Albany Congress met here to establish 
more friendly relations with the Indians and to draw up a 
plan of union of the colonies. A plan, largely the work of 
Benjamin Franklin, was outlined, but it was rejected by the 
colonists because they felt that it gave too much power to 
the king, and it was rejected by the king because he declared 
that it left too much in the hands of the colonists. 

During the Revolutionary War Albany was a strategic 
point, and against it was directed Burgoyne’s expedition 
which ended in his surrender at Saratoga. In 1797 the 
town became the permanent capital of the state. Popula¬ 
tion, about 115,000. 

ALBATROSS. The great wandering albatross of the 
lonely southern seas holds a strange spell over the 
sailor. He believes this bird, following a ship for 


HOW THE ALBATROSS “TAXIES" TO GET A START 



Looks as if he were running on top of the water, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what he is doing. The albatross doesn’t raise himself by 
jumping into the air and vibrating his wings, as you see little birds do on land. He spreads his wings out stiff, like the planes of a flying 
machine, and runs along the water until these planes of his lift him up, as the flying machine is lifted by its planes and as your kite is 
lifted up when you run with it. This running along the surface when rising, the airmen call “taxi-ing.” 


buildings which, combined with large public parks 
and wide boulevards, make Albany a beautiful city. 

From the days of the Indians, when the great 
Mohawk trail met here other important trails and 
canoe routes to the southwest, north, and east, 
Albany has been a great trading center. With the 
completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 (see Canals) its 

For any subject not found in its 


days at a time* with seemingly motionless wings, 
possesses an unnatural power, and no sailor is so bold 
as to harm one of them. About this old superstition 
Coleridge constructed his well-known poem, ‘The 
Ancient Mariner’. 

The wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) is the 
largest of all water birds, and it has the greatest wing 

alphabetical place see information 






ALBERT I 


] Heroic King of the Belgians 


expanse of the entire bird kingdom, its wings often 
measuring 10 to 14 feet from tip to tip. Its body, 
however, weighs only about 18 pounds. The feathers 
covering the body are white with wavy black lines, 
and they are very thick. The wing feathers are dark 
and, at the tips, quite black. The male and female birds 
dress exactly alike. 

The three front 
toes of their large 
feet are webbed, and 
the hind toe is small. 

The albatross 
lives on the wing. 

It lights on the 
water only to snatch 
a fish or a bit of 
refuse from a ship. 

When it wishes to 
rise again it lifts its 
great wings and runs 
along the top of the 
water for 70 or 80 
yards before it can 
acquire sufficient 
impetus to do so. 

During the nesting season these birds go to the 
barren antarctic islands, where the mother bird lays 
her egg, a large whitish one with brown spots, which 
she usually deposits on the bare sand. When the 
baby bird is hatched, it is tended by the parent birds 
until it is able to care for itself. 

There are about 16 species of albatrosses and all 
like best to live in the tropic seas. The black-footed 
and Laysan species, however, wander as far north as 
Alaska and are often seen off the Pacific coast. 
Albert i. King of the Belgians (1875- ). A 
dull leaden sky stretches over a ghostly gray land 
of flood and mist. In the distance a thin grayish- 
brown shadow among the mutilated tree trunks 
marks the German lines of that section of the battle- 
front in the westernmost corner of Belgium. Near at 
hand are mounds of earth and sandbags rising breast 
high from the mud and water, the sole protection 
of the little Belgian army. On a duck-board walk 
behind one of these embankments we catch a glimpse 
of a group of soldiers in their mud-caked uniforms. 
One, taller than the rest by several inches, walks with 
a slight limp, the result of a wound received early in 
the war. 

Suddenly the scene shifts and we find ourselves in 
Brussels on Nov. 22, 1918. The streets of the capital 
are filled with throngs of joyous and excited Belgians. 
Suddenly there arises the shout, “The King is 
coming,” and we see down the flower-strewn street 
lined with waving flags a procession, the most conspi¬ 
cuous figure in which is the tall soldier of the firing- 
line. 

It is King Albert, the hero-king of the Belgians, 
who for four long years was practically a king without 
a country, but who now has come into his own at 

Reference 


a time when the kings and kaisers of the Central 
Powers are scurrying like frightened rabbits to safe 
hiding-places. And if we go forward a few years and 
visit some of the firesides of Belgium, we shall hear 
the men who fought in the World War of 1914-18 
telling their children and grandchildren of how they 

saw their king in a 
soiled uniform, eat¬ 
ing the warmed-up 
soup of the regular 
rations, sharing his 
match with a soldier 
from whom he has 
just received a cig¬ 
arette, or helping to 
render first aid to 
those injured in 
battle. 

Is it any wonder 
that the people of 
Belgium are devoted 
to their king? As 
one Socialist said, 
after three months 
of war, “If Belgium 
were made a republic and the people had an abso¬ 
lutely free choice for president, they would elect 
King Albert by a vast majority.” 

When Prince Albert first learned that he was to 
succeed his uncle Leopold II as king of the Belgians, 
he decided that he needed more knowledge for his 
future task. Like Peter the Great of old, he thought 
he could obtain this more readily if people did not 
know who he was. So, disguised as a newspaper 
reporter, he went to the principal seaports of Europe 
to study shipping and shipbuilding. Later—in 1898 
—he came to the United States to investigate the rail¬ 
roads; and he went to South Africa to observe at first 
hand conditions in Belgium’s colony, the Congo State. 

When he became king in 1909, at the age of 32, he 
began to apply the knowledge he had gained. He 
improved the merchant marine of the country, and 
he brought about better conditions in the Congo. 
But most of all he wanted to reorganize the army. 
After a long struggle with parliament he secured its 
consent, but the work was only half completed when 
on that fateful Aug. 2, 1914, Germany demanded a 
passage through Belgium in order to attack France. 
This King Albert refused, and war followed. Albert 
at once hurried from Brussels to join his army, and 
he never left it except when it was necessary for him 
to cross into France or England to confer with heads 
of the other armies. 

And not far from him in all those four long years, working 
in the hospitals just back of the lines, was his wife, Queen 
Elizabeth, caring for the wounded and feeding the hungry. 
While Albert was in the trenches she was in the hospitals 
except for brief airplane trips to England to visit her children 
who had been sent there for safety. On a brief visit to the 
United States after the terrible war was at last over. King 
Albert and his Queen were given a most enthusiastic welcome. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

81 



ALBERT I, KING OF THE BELGIANS, AND HIS CONSORT 


contained in the Easy 














ALBERTA 


The Three Divisions of Alberta 




X 


BEAUTIFUL ALBERTA, LAND 



of GOLDEN GRAIN 


A lberta, 

Canai 

foothills of the Rockies 
and the prairies of western 
Canada meet in the rich 
province of Alberta, the 
most westerly of the three 
Prairie Provinces. This 
vast new region, of nearly 
256,000 square miles—more than twice the size of 
Great Britain and Ireland—extends 750 miles north 
from the boundary line with the United States, and is 
from 250 to 400 miles wide. Its average elevation is 
considerably higher than that of its eastern neighbor 
Saskatchewan, and its surface is more diversified. 
About half of its total area, or more than 80,000,000 
?,cres, it is estimated, can be profitably used for farm¬ 
ing. A large part of this agricultural land is still 
public domain, and homesteads of 160 acres are ob¬ 
tainable on easy terms from the Dominion government. 

Besides its wealth in fertile farming land, Alberta 
also contains extensive deposits of coal and other 
minerals. More than 56,000 square miles, it is 
believed, are underlain with valuable coal, giving 
Alberta 85 per cent of the coal of the entire Dominion. 
Natural gas is found in large supplies, chiefly in the 
Medicine Hat district, which is rapidly becoming an 
important manufacturing center because of the advan¬ 


tages afforded by this 
cheap fuel. Traces of 
petroleum are found 
over practically the 
whole province, and 
immense beds of bitu¬ 
minous or “tar” sands, which are estimated to 
yield one barrel of crude oil to the cubic yard, extend 
for a hundred miles along the Athabaska River. 

There are three natural divisions of the province. 
Southern Alberta is open prairie, except for the foot¬ 
hill country. This region was at one time given over 
to ranching but it is now chiefly devoted to grain 
farming. Here the winters are tempered by the 
warm dry chinook winds (see Winds), which fre¬ 
quently melt the winter snows and raise the tem¬ 
perature from below zero to springlike warmth 
within a few hours, making it possible for cattle and 
horses to graze in the fields all winter. This advan¬ 
tage is partially counterbalanced by the fact that 
these warm winds carry off the moisture, making it 
necessary in some parts to practice irrigation and 
dry farming. 

Central Alberta, the country lying north of Cal¬ 
gary, with Edmonton (the capital) as its center, is 


Extent. —North and south, 750 miles; east and west, 250 to 400 miles. 

Area, about 256,000 square miles. Population, about 600,000. 
Physical Features. —Rocky Mountains on southwestern boundary; 
South Saskatchewan, Red Deer, North Saskatchewan, Athabaska, 
Peace, and Hay rivers; Lesser Slave Lake, Lake Claire, and Lake 
Athabaska. 

Products. —Wheat, oats, barley, rye, flax, hay, turnips; cattle, sheep, 
horses; coal, asphalt, and petroleum; timber. 

Cities. —Calgary, Edmonton (capital), Lethbridge, Medicine Hat. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see information 


82 










ALBUMEN 


I Peace River Valley 



the most thickly settled part of the province. In the 
north it has a considerable tree growth, principally 
of poplar and other soft-wood trees. The effective 
precipitation is greater, and the moisture-holding 
qualities of the rich black soil better than in southern 
Alberta. Central Alberta is the great mixed farm- 

FARM LIFE IN CENTRAL ALBERTA 


Park, at Wainwright, where 4,000 buffalo and a num¬ 
ber of elk are preserved on a reservation of more than 
100,000 acres. 

Since its organization as a province in 1905, Alberta has 
had a government similar to that of the other provinces of 
the Dominion. Good provision has been made for educa¬ 
tion by a system of public, secondary, and college insti¬ 
tutions. There are technical schools in the cities 
and a system of secondary agricultural schools in 
small towns for farm boys and girls. The growth 
of the province has been phenomenal, the present 
population of about 600,000 being nine times the 
population at the beginning of the century. (See 
Calgary; Edmonton.) 



ALBU'MEN. This substance, so important 
in plant and animal life, is best known in the 
form in which it appears in the white of eggs, 
which consists chiefly of albumen and water. 
In this form albumen is a transparent semi¬ 
fluid substance, but if heated it coagulates and 
hardens, as we find it in a hard-boiled egg. 

Albumen is found in the serum 
of the blood, in the vitreous and * 
crystalline humors of the eye, 
and in the juice of animal flesh. 
Another variety occurs in seeds, 


These pictures will give you a good idea of 
what it is like to be a farmer in central 
Alberta. What level fields of rich black 
soil! Those hogs are of the best breed 
and you see they are being treated as all 
well-bred hogs should be. And so they 
are giving the farmer ample returns on his 
investment. In the next picture are samples of sugar corn 
and tomatoes grown in Alberta. The lower right hand 
picture shows a fine stand of fodder com on a dairy farm, 
the same farm on which the pigs are enjoying themselves. 

With such opportunities for profitable farming, it is not to 
be wondered at that the population of Alberta has grown 
so rapidly and that no schools in the world are more 
popular with boys and girls than the excellent agricultural 
schools in this province. 

ing, dairying, and pure-bred stock-raising part 
of the province. It produces heavy crops of 
feed grains, hay, and roots. 

Northern Alberta, so far as development is 
concerned, is the Peace River valley. This 
part of the province, which still has consider¬ 
able areas of free public land, is attracting 
settlement to a greater extent than any other part of 
Canada {see Peace River). The timber resources of 
Northern Alberta are large, for a forest belt extends 
hundreds of miles on the north side of the Saskatch¬ 
ewan River. The foothill country abounds in game 
of all sorts—Rocky Mountain sheep, goats, elk, 
moose, caribou, and a great variety of useful game 
birds such as grouse, partridge, geese, and ducks. 
Fur-bearing animals such as the bear, beaver, marten, 
otter, muskrat, and prairie timber wolf furnish an 
output valued at between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 
annually passing through Edmonton. The lakes and 
rivers abound with fish. There are several park 
reservations in Alberta, the most notable being the 
scenically beautiful Rocky Mountain Park, with 
Banff on the Canadian Pacific Railway (82 miles west 
of Calgary) as the most interesting point; and Buffalo 


grains, and in the juices of plants. Albumen belongs 
to the class of substances called proteins, which form 
an important part of food, since they build up the 
tissues of the body {see Proteins). 

When albumen coagulates in a fluid, it encloses any 
substance that may be suspended in the fluid and 
with this impurity rises to the surface as scum, or 
sinks to the bottom, according to the weight of the 
liquid holding it. Thus the white of egg is used to 
“settle” coffee, and other forms of albumen are used 
to clarify sugar, etc. 

In modern chemical usage the word albumen is 
usually applied only to the white of egg and to the 
nutritive substance found in seeds. The related 
forms are called albumins. The chemistry of the 
albumins is exceedingly complicated, but all contain 
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and oxygen. 


n t at n e d in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


83 








ALCOHOL 


ALCOTT, LOUISA M.| 


ALCOHOL. The word alcohol is of Arabic origin 
and was originally applied as the name of a kind of 
black paint used by Eastern women for darkening 
their eyebrows. It is not known how the word came 
to be applied in its present use. 

Alcohol is produced by the action of yeast on 
sugar. There are several varieties of yeast and several 
kinds of sugar (see Sugar). Fruit juices, such as 
those of grapes, apples, berries, etc., are frequently 
used as the source of the sugar. The yeast is then 
put in and fermentation follows, producing alcohol 
and carbon dioxide. The latter, being a gas, escapes 
into the air and is the cause of the bubbling which we 
see in fermenting liquids. Grains are another source 
from which alcohol is produced. Corn, rye, barley, 
etc., are “malted”—that is they are allowed to sprout, 
the starch of the grain thus being converted into 
a sugar (see Enzymes). Water is then added to make 
a “mash,” and fermentation is started. Ground 
potatoes or ground grain with the addition of molasses 
. may be used instead of malted grain. The alcohol 
is then separated by distilling the fermented “mash”; 
this is usually done by boiling the mixture in a 
covered vessel and condensing the vapor by passing 
it through a coiled copper tube or “still” immersed 
in cold water. 

Alcohol is the active principle of intoxicating drinks. 
Brandy, whiskey, rum, and gin are distilled liquors, 
and contain about one-half alcohol. The fermented 
juices of fruits if used undistilled are called wines or 
cider, and contain about 7 to 14 per cent of alcohol. 
Beer and ale are fermented from malted barley with 
the addition of hops; they contain from 2 to 10 per 
cent alcohol. When alcohol is drunk it undergoes 
oxidation in the body, just as sugar, starch, and other 
similar substances do. It produces at first exhilara¬ 
tion; then, as it gets possession of the nerves of 
feeling, stupidity; then, when it has paralyzed the 
nerves of motion, insensibility; and finally, if taken 
in large quantities, it reaches the heart and the result 
is death. By the 18th amendment to the Constitu¬ 
tion, the importation, manufacture, and sale of alco¬ 
holic beverages in the United States is prohibited 
(see Prohibition). 

Alcohol has many interesting properties, however, 
making it of great industrial importance. As it never 
freezes at any natural temperatures, it is used in cold 
countries in thermometers. It is used in medicines 
for dissolving drugs, in varnishes for dissolving the 
resins and gums, and in cologne for dissolving the 
oils and other aromatic substances. It is used for 
preserving zoological specimens, and as an antiseptic 
in treating wounds. Chemists and others find it a 
clean and valuable fuel; and with the growing scarcity 
of gasoline, efforts are being made to develop the use 
of alcohol in this country, as it already has been 
abroad, as fuel for automobile and other internal 
combustion engines. 

Ordinary alcohol, which is sometimes called “grain 
alcohol” or “spirits of wine,” is known to the chemist 


as “ethyl alcohol.” Its formula is C 2 H 5 OH. When 
deprived entirely of any admixture of water, it is 
called “absolute alcohol,” and has important uses in 
the sciences and arts. 

The chemical name for wood alcohol, CH 3 OH, is 
“methyl alcohol.” It is made by the dry distillation 
of wood, especially beech, maple, or birch. In many 
uses it can be substituted with success for grain 
alcohol, and it is much cheaper than the latter. But 
it is strongly poisonous and must not be used in¬ 
ternally, total blindness, if not death, being the result 
of drinking it. Because it is not adapted for use as 
a beverage, its manufacture and sale are freely per¬ 
mitted. The same is true of “denatured alcohol,” 
which is ethyl alcohol with an admixture of 10 per 
cent or more of methyl alcohol or other substance 
which unfits the mixture for drinking, while allowing 
of its use for industrial purposes. The most impor¬ 
tant uses of denatured alcohol are as a fuel and in the 
manufacture of aniline dyes, starch, soaps, tobacco, 
shellac, celluloid, paints, shoeblacking, disinfectants, 
explosives, anti-freezing mixtures, and cleaning and 
polishing preparations. 

Solidified alcohol or “canned heat,” so much used 
for alcohol stoves, is made by mixing denatured 
alcohol with melted stearic acid, adding a little phenol- 
phthalein solution and a few drops of strong sodium 
hydroxide in solution, which gives the faint pink 
color. When hardened it can be cut in cubes. 
ALCOTT, Louisa May (1832-1888). In a quaint 
“homey,” many-windowed, rambling brown house 
set in an old-fashioned garden near Concord, Mass., 
there lived about 75 
years ago a family 
well known to all 
readers of ‘Little 
Women’. The four 
girls who, under the 
names of Meg, Jo, 

Beth, and Amy, be¬ 
came like sisters to 
all the young girls 
of America, there 
worked, studied, 
played, and grew to 
young womanhood. 

The father—Amos 
Bronson Alcott, 
whose name is asso¬ 
ciated with those of Emerson and Thoreau in the 
literary life of Concord—was a noble-hearted man 
and a very earnest philosopher and teacher, but too 
impractical to earn a comfortable living for his 
family. So the burden fell on Mrs. Alcott, the capa¬ 
ble. sweet-natured, and unselfish “Marmee” of 
‘Little Women’, until Louisa (the Jo of the story) 
through her teaching and writing lifted the burden 
from her mother’s shoulders. 

Louisa Alcott had begun to write verses at the age 
of 8, and at 16 she sold her first story. But there 



For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


84 


place 


see information 














ALDER 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT 



were many trials and hardships before her writing 
brought her much money or recognition. Her first 
successful book was ‘Hospital Sketches’, published 
after illness forced her to give up her work as an'army 
nurse in the Civil War. ‘ Little Women’, written soon 
afterwards, won the hearts of young and old, and 
made its author famous. Her readers clamored for 
more, and in spite of ill health and many responsibil¬ 
ities, she continued until the end of her life to write 
one after another of her cheerful, wholesome, warmly 
human novels. 

Louisa Alcott’s best-known works are in 'The Little 
Women Series,’ with titles as follows: ‘Little Women’ (1868); 
‘An Old-Fashioned Girl’ (1869); ‘Little Men’ (1871); ‘Eight 
Cousins’ (1874); ‘Rose in Bloom’ (1876); ‘Under the Lilacs’ 
(1878); ‘Jack and Jill’ (1880); ‘Jo’s Boys’ (1886). Among 
her many other stories are those in the ‘Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Bag’ 
Series, (1871-82), and the ‘Spinning Wheel Stories’(1884). 

Alder ( al'der ). Almost every brook or stream of 
New England is shaded by the dark olive-green 
foliage of the speckled alder, and mile after mile of 
valley road is edged by this beautiful bushy tree. It 
is the brook-trout’s best friend, for it shades his pebbly 
retreat and entangles the angler’s fly. There are 20 
species of alder, the most common species native to 
our country being this speckled or hoary alder, which 
is found in wet places from Pennsylvania and Nebras¬ 
ka north to Canada. It is more properly a shrub than 
a tree, yet it often grows to a height of 20 feet, and 
sometimes has one substantial trunk. The leaves are 
oval, coarse, and irregularly notched, with a whitish 
down underneath. The graceful purple and yellow 
catkin appears in the spring, scattering clouds of 
pollen if disturbed. In the autumn the catkin buds 
and cones, which resemble tiny red-pine cones, are 
found on the same bush. The wood is soft, light, and 
of little value. It will not endure alternate wetting 
and drying, but if kept under water becomes hard 
and durable; so it is sometimes used in mill-work, 
piles of bridges, watering troughs, etc. The branches 
furnish the best charcoal for making gunpowder. 

The European alder (Alnus glutinosa), which often 
adorns our parks, is a handsome tree from 25 to 
60 feet tall, with leaves very much like those of the 
speckled alder. 

Scientific name of speckled alder, Alnus incana. Bark 
shiny, ruddy green. Branches bushy, crooked. Leaves 
alternate, oblong with pointed tips, finely notched; dark 
green turning yellow in autumn. 

ALEXANDER, Czars of Russia. Three of the 
autocratic rulers of “all the Russias” have borne the 
eminent name of Alexander. 

Alexander I, who ruled 1801-1825, was czar 
during the Napoleonic era and was connected with 
many of the stirring events of that time. Forced 
into hostilities by the ambitions of the French con¬ 
queror, in 1805 he joined with England, Austria, 
and Prussia in the great European coalition against 
France. But after the defeat of his army at Fried- 
land, in 1807, he deserted the allies, and in the 
treaty of Tilsit he and Napoleon agreed to divide 

the Easy Reference 


the world between them. Alexander was to rule the 
East and Napoleon the West. Alexander soon 
discovered, however, that Napoleon’s continental 
blockade (see Napoleon) was injuring his country, 
and other causes of dispute arose; so he returned to 
the cause of the allies. Napoleon’s disastrous ex¬ 
pedition against Russia in 1812 proved the beginning 
of the French emperor’s downfall. In 1815, at the 
Congress of Vienna, Alexander still showed some of 
the liberal principles which he had earlier adopted. 
He was also somewhat of a religious mystic, and to 
him was due the formation of the Holy Alliance. 
In this the sovereigns declared their “fixed resolution 
to take for their sole guide the precepts of that Holy 
Religion (Christianity),” and to “remain united by 
the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity.” The 
“Holy Alliance” really never amounted to anything 
but the name came to be applied to the Grand 
Alliance, which was the governing body of Europe 
at that time. Subsequently Metternich so worked 
upon Alexander’s fears that he became as conserva¬ 
tive as any of his brother rulers, and in his last years 
undid many reforms of the first part of his reign. 

Alexander II, 1855-1881, the grand-nephew of 
Alexander I, was popularly known as “the Czar 
Liberator” because on March 3, 1861, he issued the 
great Edict of Emancipation, giving to the serfs 
of Russia their freedom and a share in the lands 
which they had cultivated for generations. But like 
Alexander I he began to take fright at his own liberal 
work and became a reactionary. The disappointment 
felt by many at this change of attitude was great, and 
it led to several attempts by secret societies of 
“Nihilists” or terrorists to assassinate him. One of 
these was finally successful in March 1881, when a 
nitroglycerin bomb was hurled against his carriage. 
That very day the Czar had signed a “ukase” or 
decree which would have laid the foundation of 
constitutional government in Russia. 

Alexander III, 1881-1894, revoked his father’s 
decree, and his whole reign was one long struggle 
between a rigid reactionary policy on the part of the 
court and the unsuccessful attempts of the terrorists 
to reform the government by plots and assassinations. 
Alexander the great. King of Macedon 
(356-323 b.c.). “My father will leave nothing for 
me to do!” So the boy Alexander once exclaimed as 
he noted the triumphs of his father, Philip, king of 
Macedon. But though Philip made himself master 
over nearly all of the Greek states, the rest of the 
civilized world remained as a vast field for Alexander’s 
conquests—a field not too great for his boundless 
ambition and his far-reaching genius as a soldier and 
statesman. 

During the 13 years of his reign, 336-323 b.c., 
Alexander wrote his name large on the history of four 
civilizations—the Greek, Semitic, Egyptian, and 
Iranian—and made himself a place with the few men 
like Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, who have 
decisively changed the current of world history. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

85 


contained in 






ALEXANDER THE GREAT 



Untying Knots with the Sword 




Born at Pella, the capital of Macedon, in 356 b.c., 
and carefully educated by the great Aristotle, he 
early gave evidence of his remarkable gifts. When 
only 16 he took charge of the government in his 
father’s absence. Two years later he showed such 
courage in the battle of Chaeronea, where the 
Macedonians defeated the Greek forces, that his 
father, embracing him, said: “My son, ask for 
thyself another kingdom, for that which I leave is 
too small for thee.” 

At Philip’s death, Alexander, not yet 20 years old, 
ascended the throne and prepared to finish the 
conquests which his father had begun. When 
Thebes revolted, he struck terror into all Greece by 
razing the city to the ground. His respect for Greek 
art and letters, however, led him to spare the house of 
the poet Pindar. 

Conquest of the Mighty Persian Empire 
With Greece at his feet, Alexander was now free to 
realize the almost incredibly bold design of conquering 
the Persian Empire—an empire fifty times as large as 
all Greece and with twenty times as many people. 
For centuries the life of Greek civilization had been 
menaced by Persia, which had pushed westward to 
the Aegean Sea. The danger was ever present of 
some sudden powerful stroke which should crush the 
culture of the West and 
plunge the entire world into 
Eastern semi-barbarism. 
Already the influence of 


ALEXANDER AND THE GORDIAN KNOT 

Here we see the young conqueror just as he is about to deliver the sword 
stroke that cut the Gordian knot, thus, according to the oracle, revealing 
himself as the future master of the world. He is holding one end of the 
knotted thong with his left hand, while his right hand holds the sword ready 
to deliver the stroke. 


Oriental life and superstition was sapping away the 
strength of Hellenism. Alexander’s mission was first 
to free the Greek cities of Asia Minor—one-third of 
the entire Greek world; then to sweep Persian power 
from the rest of the eastern Mediterranean; and 
finally to crush Persia itself so thoroughly that 
centuries were to elapse before the East should ever 
again seriously menace the 
West. By extending Greek 
civilization over all the 
shores of the Mediterranean 
and into interior Asia, Alex¬ 
ander unwittingly paved 
the way for the spread of 
Christianity three centuries 
later. 

Crossing the Hellespont, 

Alexander invaded Asia 
Minor in 334 and defeated 
the Persians in a number of 
battles, overthrowing with 
his own lance the son-in-law 
of the king. The cities of 
Asia opened their gates to 
the conqueror as he marched 
to meet the great king himself. On the way he came 
upon the famous Gordian knot, with which a Phrygian 
king had bound his chariot yoke so tightly and so 
intricately that no one had been able to untie it. 
An oracle foretold that whoever should untie that 
knot should become master of the world. 
Alexander “cut the Gordian knot” with a 
single stroke of his sword. That was always 
his way with difficulties; he solved them—just 
as he won his victories—by sudden bold strokes, 
rather than by subtle and ingenious methods. 

Alexander met the Persian king Darius III 
in the great battle of Issus, between the moun¬ 
tains and the sea at the northeastern corner of 
the Mediterranean. Here the resistless Mace¬ 
donian phalanx utterly routed the disorderly 
masses of the Persians (333 b.c.). The Persian 
monarch offered all Asia, as far as the Euphrates, 
as the condition of peace; but his conqueror 
proudly refused. 

Onward he swept, reducing the enemy’s 
strongholds one after another. Egypt easily 
fell into his hands, and there he built one of 
the 70 cities he is said to have founded—the 
city of Alexandria, destined to be in a few 
decades the metropolis of Egypt. 

With the Mediterranean world in his grasp, 
Alexander now retraced his steps eastward and 
thrust at the heart of Persia itself. He met 
Darius again in the spring of 331 at the battle 
of Arbela, near the Tigris River. The Persians 
greatly outnumbered the Macedonians, but 
their army was easily crushed. Darius, ut¬ 
terly vanquished and forced to flee, was 
stabbed by his own treacherous attendants. 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
FROM A BUST IN THE 
BRITISH MUSEUM 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

86 












| Pride Conquers the Conqueror 



ALEXANDRIA 


Alexander entered in triumph Babylon and Susa, 
the storehouse of the treasures of the East, and 
Persepolis, the capital of Persia. Continuing east¬ 
ward and northward he conquered the Scythians on 
the banks of the Jaxartes River. He then turned 
southward, planning to conquer India. But when he 
had reached the valley of the Ganges, his soldiers, 
wearied with nearly eight years of fighting, refused 
to follow him further, and he was forced to turn back. 

End of a Great Career 

Returning to Babylon, he found ambassadors from 
all parts of the world awaiting to pay him homage. 
Not satisfied with this homage, and perhaps moved 
by the fact that the eastern peoples he had conquered 
would not permanently acknowledge the sway of any 
except a king who claimed divine descent, Alexander 
had for some years demanded that his subjects wor¬ 
ship him as a god. So unbounded had his pride and 
arrogance become that in a burst of passion he had 
killed his best friend Clitus who mocked at his pre¬ 
tensions to divinity. Like many another conqueror, 
Alexander was himself partly conquered by the life 
and ideals of the people he had overcome. 

It was Alexander’s settled policy to rule Asia in Asiatic 
fashion, and to graft Greek culture upon Persian civilization 
so far as he could. He married two Persian princesses, and 
had many of his followers take Asiatic wives. He wore the 
Persian costume and adopted the ceremonies of the Persian 
court, to the indignation of his sturdy Macedonian followers. 
He kept the ancient Persian system of government for the 
most part; but he put three officials of equal rank at the 
head of each province, instead of the one all-powerful satrap 


overflow of the river, one of the earliest scientific expeditions 
of which we have record. 

But with the greatness of Alexander’s character there 
were mingled elements of weakness. He gave way at times 
to dissipation, and it was perhaps as a result of a drunken 
debauch that he contracted a fever and died in 323, at the 
age of 33. 

Alexandria, Egypt. Of all the cities which 
Alexander the Great scattered over the East, Alex¬ 
andria, near the mouth of the Nile, is the most 
famous. At the height of its splendor it even rivaled 
“the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that 
was Rome.” 

Let us picture Alexandria in the early centuries of 
the Christian era. Over the blue waters of the harbor 
glided Roman war galleys, with dazzling sails and 
flashing oars. At the docks were moored big grain 
ships loading for Rome, their tall sides rising story on 
story above the buildings along the shore. Nearby 
were ships that had braved the Atlantic storms along 
the coast of Spain, and oriental craft which had 
passed through the Nile canal from the Red Sea and 
Indian Ocean, bringing rich goods of the East. 

Picturesque Metropolis of the Mediterranean 

On the noisy quays gathered a motley crowd— 
Jews, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and negro slaves 
from Nubia—mingling all dialects and all manner of 
costumes. Sailors and soldiers told tales of distant 
lands, while merchants and dock hands hurried about 
among the huge piles of merchandise. Heaps of 
native wheat, bars of tin from the British Isles, bolts 


ALEXANDRIA IN THE DAYS OF ITS GLORY 



Here is Alexandria in the days of its glory The picture shows the Greek onThV^aTrfaL^ The' “ya^l^s^ankedflfe 

But you can also see the Roman arch and . t ^®^em ul eofthe seagodNeptune. In Alexandria stood the two great obelisks which 
harbor on tteeast.^ ‘^eof^hese t now in New York, and the other in London. 


of the Persian system, thus affording better protection both 
to the central government and to the people. 

Alexander vigorously promoted enterprises for the benefit 
of his subjects and in the interest of scientific research. He 
erected many great public buildings, ordered the restoration 
of the canal system of Babylonia, and set on foot many 
other public works. He never ceased to take a deep interest 
in learning. Even on his great campaigns he collected 
hundreds of natural history specimens and sent them to his 
old teacher Aristotle, in Athens. He sent an exploring 
expedition up the Nile to ascertain the causes of the annual 

contained in the Easy Reference 


of silk from China, and cotton fabrics from India 
cluttered the wharfs. And above the whole pictur¬ 
esque scene towered the gigantic Pharos—the first of 
lighthouses and one of the seven wonders of the world. 

Within the city, and ringing a wide semicircle of 
blue sea, were great palaces and towers surrounded 
by beautiful parks and gardens adorned with tropical 
trees, lakes, fountains, and sculptured monuments. 
And here, in the midst of this natural beauty, 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

87 




































































gathered the most celebrated intellects of the world. 
For Alexandria had become not only the greatest 
commercial center of the Mediterranean, but also the 
seat of ancient art, philosophy, and religion. 

In Alexandria flourished the famous Hellenistic 
or later Greek civilization. Its famous museum 
contained a library of over 400,000 manuscripts, and 
was founded by the first Pto¬ 
lemy, when he became king of 
Egypt at Alexander’s death, near 
the close of the 4th century b.c. 

Among those priceless docu¬ 
ments generations of writers, 
scientists, and philosophers, in¬ 
cluding Euclid the father of 
geometry, Theocritus the Greek 
poet, and more recently Ptolemy 
the geographer, had held grave 
discussions. And since the dawn 
of Christianity, the problems of 
the new religion were fought 
out in bitter controversies, cul¬ 
minating in the great split be¬ 
tween Athanasius, the bishop of 
Alexandria, and the priest Arius, 
founder of the famous Arian 
heresy. 

Alexandria under Christian Rule 

The old temples, where once 


THE FAMOUS POMPEY’S PILLAR 


This first glory of Alexandria was transient. When 
in the 7th century a.d. the Arab succeeded the Greek 
and Roman and ruthlessly destroyed her wonderful 
library, a long night of Egyptian darkness set in. 
Only in the 19th century, with the cutting of the Suez 
Canal and the British occupation of Egypt, did 
Alexandria regain something of her ancient greatness. 

Alexandria was founded by the 
great Alexander in 332 b.c. It 
originally lay on the island of 
Pharos, connected with the main¬ 
land by a mole nearly a mile long 
which separated the two harbors. 
It soon spread over a large area 
on the mainland. The city was 
divided into three parts, the Jews’ 
quarter, that of the Egyptians, 
and the royal or Greek quarter. 
Among the principal buildings 
of that day were the palace of 
the Ptolemies, and the temple 
of the Caesars beside which 
stood the two obelisks, known as 
“Cleopatra’s needles,” placed 
there by Julius Caesar in honor 
of the famous Egyptian queen. 
One of these obelisks stands in 
New York City today, the other 
in London. 


, i 1111 This is Pompey’s Pillar, near Alexandria. It was ., , . , , . , 

tne pagan gods held sway, were erected to commemorate Diocletian’s capture of the Alexandria played a prominent 

thronged with dark-clad monks ci %exandr!arS al ‘ Partin Napoleon’s Egyptian cam- 

at their devotions. Through the 
green gardens and airy colonnades wandered bronzed 
and ragged hermits from the desert—men whose 
fierce religious zeal showed in their wild eyes, their 
limbs wasted with long fasts, and torn with self- 


A BEGGAR BY THE WAYSIDE 


The beggar by the wayside is a common object in Egypt, as in other 
parts of the Orient. This picture shows one of these men who lives 
entirely on the charity of the passer-by. He is sitting near the wall 
of one of the native cemeteries. 

inflicted wounds. They had left their cells and 
huts in the wilderness to preach of the approaching 
end of the world, and on every corner they stopped 
to denounce with burning words the sinful luxury of 
the great city. 


paign of 1798, and was bombarded 
by the British in 1882 at the time of Arabi 
Pasha’s rebellion against the Khedive. 

Modern Alexandria shows few traces of the ancient 
city. The mole has become silted up and forms a 
neck of land, on which live most of the Mohammedan- 
inhabitants. There is an Arab quarter with oriental 
bazaars, a large European quarter, and an industrial 
and manufacturing district with asphalt works, and 
oil, rice, and paper mills. The city is connected by 
canal with the Nile River and Cairo, and is linked 
by a network of railway and telegraph lines with 
other towns of Egypt. The chief exports are raw 
cotton, grain, rice, and sugar. Standing near the 
Suez Canal where East meets West, Alexandria is 
now, as in the days of old, one of the most cosmopoli¬ 
tan cities of the world. Population, about 445,000. 
Alfalfa. It is estimated that to produce 100 
pounds of beef, 1,000 pounds of grain is required 
when used with prairie hay, corn fodder, or millet; 
but that if alfalfa hay is fed with the grain, the amount 
of grain used may be reduced nearly one-half in 
producing the same amount of beef. It is also esti¬ 
mated that an acre of alfalfa in a season will some¬ 
times produce 776 pounds of pork, where hogs are 
pastured on it. It is excellent for young stock because 
it is rich in protein. 

Alfalfa will produce a crop every 40 days, and will 
average 2.52 tons of cured hay to the acre as against 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see information 

88 









j How Alfalfa Helps the Farmer 


ALFALFA 


WHAT A LOT OF NITRATE 
FACTORIESI 



1.22 tons for timothy and 1.29 for clover. It is cut 
when the plants are just coming into bloom, and 
yields from three to seven crops a year, depending 
upon the length of the season. Because of its frequent 
blossoming it is a good crop for honey bees. 

This plant is also 
valuable as a nitrate 
gatherer. The free 
nitrogen is drawn from 
the air and stored in 
the plant roots by the 
action of certain bac¬ 
teria which form 
nodules or knots on 
the plant roots. Alfalfa 
will not grow in an 
acid soil unfavorable 
to the growth of these 
bacteria, and such soils 
must be well limed be¬ 
fore seeding to alfalfa. 
On fields where alfalfa 
has never been grown 
it may also be necessary 
to “inoculate” the soil 
with these bacteria, 
either by transferring 
soil from a field where 
alfalfa has flourished, 
or by treating the seed 

Alfalfa roots have more nitrate fac- with a preparation COn- 
tories on them than there are manu- , • • ,, r i 

facturing plants in Philadelphia or taming these useful 

“‘TrUuMel.cMrietSS' ^cteria. (Such inocu- 

lating cultures can be 
obtained from the Department of Agriculture at 
Washington.) 

Alfalfa is an unusually hardy perennial and it can 
be grown in a great variety of climatic conditions. 
It grows on fields below sea-level in southern Cali¬ 
fornia, or at altitudes of 8,000 feet in Colorado; in 
the dry regions of the West, or in the Gulf states of 
heavy rainfall; in the tropical climate of the South, 
or in the Northwest where the winters are severe. 
After a growth or “stand” has once been obtained, 
there is rarely a crop failure, and alfalfa has been 
known to produce good crops from the same field for 
over 50 years. 

The hardiness of the plant and its ability to flourish 
where other crops fail is largely due to its unusually 
long roots. These are often 15 to 20 feet long and 
reach deep into the subsoil, drawing from a storehouse 
of moisture and nourishment untouched by other 
crops. For this reason it is a good crop to use in 
rotation with other crops which draw heavily upon 
the surface soil. Weeds are a serious enemy of the 
young alfalfa plants, so that it is well to plant alfalfa 
after a cultivated crop such as corn or potatoes. 

What is called “alfalfa meal” is ground alfalfa hay. 
In this form it is fed without waste, and it is also 
shipped conveniently. Experiments have even been 

Reference 


made to adapt alfalfa to use as a food for human 
beings in candy, tonics, and breakfast foods. 

Although alfalfa is one of the most recent arrivals 
in the fields of the United States and Canada, it is 


HOW ALFALFA FARMS ANOTHER FARM 



These two diagrams show 
how alfalfa reaches down to 
depths which other crops do 
not touch, and works the 
“ other farm ” of the sub¬ 
soil. The left-hand roots are 
those of corn, while the right- 
hand diagram shows the long 
alfalfa root. 


one of the oldest forage crops known to man. It was 
grown in central Asia under the name of al-fagfagah, 
which means “the best feed,” and was introduced 
into Greece at the time of the Persian wars. The 
Romans carried it from Greece into Italy and then 
to Spain and southern France. At the time of the 
Spanish conquests in the New World, alfalfa was 
brought to Mexico and South America. It arrived 
in California about 1854, probably brought by gold- 

WHAT ALFALFA DOES FOR HOGS 


KANS. EXP-14 PIGS - ISO DAYS 



This picture shows graphically what alfalfa will do for hogs. It 
gives the result of experiments on 14 pigs for 180 days at the 
Kansas Experiment Station. 


seekers from Chile coming to California. The 
growing of alfalfa spread rapidly over the West, and 
gradually over the farms of the East, until it now 
yields an annual crop of hay and seed more than equal 
in value to the output of all the gold mines of the 
country. 

Alfalfa is also called “lucerne” from the Swiss 
canton of that name. It is a clover-like plant belong¬ 
ing to the same family as the clovers, beans, lentils, 
peas, and other plants, which are called “leguminous” 
plants because their seeds are borne in pods or 
legumes. 

Alfalfa has a smooth, upright, branching, hollow stem, 
one to two feet high. Many stems grow from one seed or 
root. The leaves are three-parted, arranged alternately, 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

89 


contained in the Easy 












and netted-veined. The flowers are purple, arranged in 
clusters on the stems and branches. The seed pods are 
coiled spirally, each containing several seeds, which are 
kidney-shaped and olive green or bright yellow in color. 
Scientific name, Medicago saliva. 

ALFONSO, Kings of Spain. Thirteen rulers of 
Spain have borne the name Alfonso. Alfonso XIII 
(1886- ), the latest of these, was king from the 

time of his birth, for his father Alfonso XII died a 
few months before his son was born. During the 
first 16 years of the young king’s life his mother 
ruled for him. This was a time of violent disorders 
in the kingdom, and of foreign war (the Spanish- 
American War of 1898) by which Spain lost practically 
the last of its colonial possessions. Alfonso took 
personal charge of the government in 1902, and 
under his rule conditions have greatly improved. 
He is a democratic liberal ruler who has used his 
power for the benefit of his kingdom. His especial 
anxiety has been to introduce into Spain progress 
and religious freedom. He and his queen, Princess 
Ena of Battenberg, grand-daughter of Queen Victoria 
of England, are much liked, not only by their own 
people but also by all who meet them. 

The name Alfonso (or Alphonso) has also been a 
favorite one in Portugal, where six kings have been 
so named, the last being Alfonso VI of Portugal, 
who reigned 1656-1667. 

Alfred THE GREAT, King of England (848-899). 
On a small lonely island amid the swamps of Wessex 
in southwestern England, King Alfred—“the wisest, 
best, and greatest king that ever reigned in England” 
—had sought refuge from his enemies, the Danes, 
who for a number of years had been plundering the 
land and overrunning the kingdoms. One day, so 
the story goes, Alfred was sheltered in a herdsman’s 
hut, and the housewife, having to leave the hut for 
a few moments, bade her guest watch the cakes 
baking before the fire. This Alfred readily promised 
to do; but his mind soon turned to affairs of state 
and to plans for defeating the Danes; so when the 
woman returned she found her cakes burned to a 
cinder. An old English song represents her as scold¬ 
ing the king, whom she did not know, saying— 

Can’t you mind the cakes, man? 

And don’t you see them burn? 

I’m bound you’ll eat them fast enough, 

As soon as ’tis the turn. 

Why Alfred Sang for the Danes 

Another story tells how Alfred went into the 
Danish camp disguised as a minstrel or wandering 
singer, in order to spy out the strength of the enemy. 
The Danes were so pleased with his singing that he 
had difficulty in getting away again. He then sum¬ 
moned his warriors from their homes, to which they 
had scattered at the end of the preceding campaign 
to care for their families and prepare their crops. 
With this newly formed army he then defeated the 
Danes in battle and drove them back into their 
fortified camp, where he besieged them for 14 days. 
Since they were now separated from their ships and 


cut off from supplies, the Danish leader Guthrum 
made a treaty, in which he agreed to leave Alfred’s 
kingdom and to accept Christianity. Later a new 
treaty was made which fixed the Thames River 
and the old Roman road called Watling Street as 
the boundary between Alfred’s kingdom and the 
Danish lands north of it. 

This treaty brought peace to the land and allowed 
Alfred to turn his attention to other pursuits than 
war. One of the things in which he was greatly 
interested was the encouragement of learning. 

One day when he was only a young boy his mother 
had said to him and to his brothers: “Do you see 
this little book, with its clear black writing, and the 
beautiful letter at the beginning, painted in red, blue, 
and gold? It shall belong to the one who first learns 
its songs.” “Mother,” said Alfred, “will you really 
give that beautiful book to me if I learn it first?” 
“Yes,” was her reply, “I really will.” Alfred then 
took the book to his teacher and soon learned to 
repeat the verses. 

Alfred the Scholar and Builder 

Now that he was king (871-899), Alfred invited 
learned men from other countries to his kingdom to 
instruct his people. He established a school similar to 
the Palace School of Charlemagne, and he translated a 
number of books from Latin into English, so that the 
people might read them. Under his direction was 
begun, also, the ‘Old English Chronicle’. This is a 
record of events, year by year, kept by the monks, 
and from it we get most of our knowledge of that 
early time. 

But not all of Alfred’s time was devoted to books. 
He rebuilt London, which had been partially destroyed 
by the Danes. He improved the army so that his 
kingdom might never again suffer as it had from these 
Northmen. He saw that England needed a navy as 
well as an army, and so he began to build ships; for 
this he is known as the “father of the English navy.” 
He encouraged industries of all kinds, and finally he 
collected and revised the old laws of the kingdom in 
order that justice might be attained more easily. 

His aim was expressed in his own words: “To sum 
up all,” he said, “it has ever been my desire to live 
worthily while I was alive, and after my death to leave 
to those that should come after me my memory in 
good works.” That he succeeded in this is proved 
by the fact that the English cherished his memory 
as “England’s Darling,” and we now call him “Alfred 
the Great.” 

Algae (dl'ge). The first little plants were sailors. 
As they floated about in the water, the living drop 
of jelly-like material that we call protoplasm soaked 
food through the thin walls of the cells. One cell 
budded from another and broke away to start a new 
family, or clung to the parent cells to form a bead¬ 
like string, or a knot. Sometimes they budded all 
around the sides and formed mats and flat net-works 
of cells. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see information 

90 







THE KING AND THE BURNING CAKES 



Notice that far-awav look in the king’s eyes. His mind is evidently still working out plans for the defeat of the Danes, and as yet he scarcely 
hears the scolding "voice. He has evidently been shaping a spear shaft with his knife, and he has his battle-ax by his side and his knife 
in his belt. It really must have been provoking to the hospitable herdsman’s wife to find that a stranger, to whom she had freely given 
the hospitality of her humble home, wouldn’t even watch the cakes for a few moments; and no doubt she said very much of what the old 

' English song in our text represents her as saying. 


Some of th^ese nets and mats floated on rocks, in 
quiet places where the motion of the water was not 
strong enough to float them off again. As the rocks 
sheltered them, the plants were not so easily torn 
apart. The cells that lay on the rocks could not 
gather so much food, so they learned to cling, while 

Reference 


the floating cells gathered food, and budded and 
spread into feathery leaf-like fronds. The plants lived 
in a colony, you see. 

How the Cells Divided Up the Work 
So, by and by, they divided the labor just as people 
do in a village. It was the business of some plants or 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

91 


contained in the Easy 








ALGAE 


ALGEBRA 


cells to cling to the rocks. Others waved in the 
water and gathered food. It wasn’t necessary any 
longer, and there wasn’t room for each cell to bud, 
although it could have done so. Certain cells began 
to collect budding material in little raised dots on 
the fronds. When these dots ripened they were 
washed off. These bud dots were spores. They were 
not seeds, they were just the hints of seeds; and the 
cells that clung to the rocks were hints of roots; and 
the cells that spread out and floated were hints of 
leaves. All together they formed—seaweeds! Sea¬ 
weeds belong to the plant family called algae. 

Algae are higher plants than fungi. They contain 
a green coloring matter called chlorophyll, which is 
absent from all fungi. This enables the plant to 
absorb part of the sunlight and use this force in 
making food. A green plant can take raw material 
like earth, air, and water, and with the aid of 
sunlight make its own food. The fungi cannot do 
this. 

The “Adams” of the Plant World 

Algae live only in the water, being found in oceans, 
rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes, and warm springs 
everywhere. Some of them are very beautiful, in a 


great variety of forms and colors. The very com¬ 
monest alga that you can all find, almost everywhere, 
is the green scum that forms on quiet ponds and 
swamps. This scum, which is known by the scientific 
name of Spirogyra, is all broken up into single plants, 
or knots and strings of cells, and can easily be sepa¬ 
rated and studied under a microscope. 

Algae are of special interest as representing the 
most primitive forms of the plant kingdom, from 
which all other groups of plants have probably been 
derived. Some are only a single cell and are micro¬ 
scopic in size, while others are very complex and huge, 
as the giant kelps of the ocean. There are three great 
groups of algae. The green algae are the simplest, 
having no other pigment than the green chlorophyll. 
The brown algae have a yellowish to brown pigment 
in addition to the chlorophyll, which gives their bodies 
various shades from olive to yellow and brown. They 
include the common large and coarser seaweeds cast 
up by the waves. The red algae have a red pigment 
in addition to the chlorophyll, and their graceful and 
often very delicate bodies, beautifully tinted with 
various shades of red, are among the most attractive 
plants on the seashore. (See Seaweeds.) 


ALGEBRA and the PROBLEMS It SOLVES 


TT IS surprising how many more things you can do with a number by using Algebra than you 
can with Arithmetic. You can write out the answers to the hardest problems before you 
really know them yourself, and then—by the magic of Algebra—the whole puzzle is presently 
solved. Anyone can do this who takes the trouble to learn thoroughly a few fundamental laws 
of this fascinating game. These laws have helped men to discover the tremendous truths of 
Physics and Astronomy and thousands of other great scientific principles. 


A LGEBRA. People sometimes think that algebra 
is only a form of arithmetic which uses letters in¬ 
stead of figures, and they wonder why pupils should be 
required to spend their time in mastering what seems 
a useless subject. Perhaps we can best see how mis¬ 
taken this view is if we start with a very necessary 
algebraic idea, that of the equation, and see how useful 
it really is. 

What an Equation Is 

In order to find the weight of a bag of flour, it is 
placed on one pan of a pair of balanced scales. The 
flour, together with a 4-pound weight, balances 10 
pounds of weights on the other pan. Now it is a well- 
known principle of balanced scales that if one takes 
the same amount from each pan, the balance is not 
disturbed. Hence, if we suppose that a 4-pound 
weight is taken from each pan, it is seen that the 
flour will be balanced by 6 pounds. 

This solves the problem; but let us analyze it a 
little farther. The important fact in the problem is 
that an unknown number of pounds of flour plus 4 
pounds in one pan balances 10 pounds in the other 
pan. If we agree to let W represent the number of 
pounds of weight in the bag of flour, and use the sign 
of equality to represent the perfect balance of the 


scales, we can express the balance of weights as 
follows: W +4 = 10. W + 4 represents the weight 
in the left pan, and 10 the weight in the right pan. 

Such a statement as W + 4 = 10 expresses equality 
and is called an equation. The number on the left 
side of the equality sign is called the left member and 
the number on the right side the right member. 

The written work of the problem may be arranged 
as follows: 

Let W = number of pounds of weight in the bag 
of flour. 

Then W +4 = 10 is the equation expressing the 
conditions of the problem. 

Subtracting 4 from each member of the equation— 

W +4 =10 
4= 4 


W =6 

the number of pounds of weight in the bag. of flour. 

Just as the scales will balance if the same number 
of pounds be taken from each pan, so we may subtract 
the same number (4) from each side of the equation 
and get another equation. 

By means of the equation and the use of letters 
(usually X and Y ) to represent unknowns, we can 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

92 









| Algebra in Old Egypt 



ALGEBRA 


shorten and simplify the labor that is often necessary 
in arithmetic. This method of solving problems is 
called algebraic and every educated person should be 
able to use it freely. 

Four Thousand Years of Algebra 

Algebra has had a long and interesting history. It 
had its beginnings in 
ancient Egypt, about 
2000 b.c., when some 
unknown mathematical 
writer discovered the 
principle of the equation. 

In the treatise which he 
wrote he used the Egyp¬ 
tian word hau (literally 
“heap”) instead of the 
letter X for the unknown 
quantity. In the British 
Museum, in London, 
there is shown a papyrus 
manuscript containing a 
copy of this most ancient 
mathematical book in 
the world, copied by a 
scribe named Ahmes 
about 1700 b.c. 

In the days of Alexan¬ 
der the Great a certain 
learned Syrian is said to 
have written a work on 
algebra which he called 
by a Syriac title mean¬ 
ing “the book of dark 
or mysterious things.” 

Seven hundred years 
later (about 350 a.d.), 

Diophantus, a Greek 
who taught in Alexan¬ 
dria, Egypt, earned the 
title “Father of Algebra” 
by his systematic at¬ 
tempts to work out the 
science. The name of 
the science was derived 
from the word Al-jabr 
(Arabic, meaning “binding together”) in the title of a 
famous work written by a Mohammedan mathema¬ 
tician of Bagdad, about the year 800. Algebra did 
not assume its present form until the 16th century. 
Even since that time many interesting and valuable 
improvements have been made, so that now a boy 
or girl in the first year of the high school can get a 
broader view of algebra than learned men were able 
to get in the old days. 

Algebra and Arithmetic Compared 

In some respects algebra is very much like arith¬ 
metic. In arithmetic, for example, we study how to 
add, subtract, multiply, and divide with numbers 
represented by the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. In algebra 
we continue to study how to use the processes of 


addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division 
with numbers, but the numbers are regularly repre¬ 
sented by letters, as is sometimes done in arithmetic. 
Thus, the interest rule often used in arithmetic, the 
interest for a given time equals the 'principal times the 
rate multiplied by the time , is in the algebra work always 

translated into the state¬ 
ment I = PRT, that is, 
Interest = Principal X 
Rate X Time. Such a 
use of letters enables us 
to write statements in 
very concise forms. 

The signs +, -, X, 

=, and V have the same 
meaning in algebra as in 
arithmetic. But in al¬ 
gebra ab means a times b 
without the use of any 
sign. A dot is also used 
at times instead of the 
sign X to indicate multi¬ 
plication, thus a .b is 
read a times b. 

When a group of let¬ 
ters is to be multiplied 
or divided as a unit by 
some other letter, we in¬ 
close the group in paren¬ 
thesis marks. Thus 
a (b + c) means that a 
multiplies both b and c, 
or that b and c must be 
added and the sum mul¬ 
tiplied by a, which is the 
same as multiplying b 
and c separately by a and 
then adding the products. 

Many problems may 
be solved either by arith¬ 
metic or by algebra. 
Algebraic and arithmet¬ 
ical solutions are given 
in contrast in the prob¬ 
lem below: 

Divide a pole 20 ft. long into two parts so that one 
part shall be four times as long as the other part. 
ARITHMETICAL SOLUTION 
The shorter part is a certain length. 

The longer part is four times this length. 

The whole pole is then five times as long as the shorter part. 
The pole is 20 ft. long. 

The shorter part is one-fifth of 20 ft., or 4 ft. 

The longer part is 4 X 4 ft., or 16 ft. 

Hence the parts are 4 ft. and 16 ft. long respectively. 
ALGEBRAIC SOLUTION 

Let n = number of feet in the shorter part. 

Then 4n = number of feet in the longer part, 

and n + 4ra, or 5 n = length of the pole. 

Then 5n = 20. 

n = 4. 

4 n = 16. 

Hence the parts are 4 ft. and 16 ft. long respectively. 


WHAT AN ALGEBRAIC EQUATION IS 





Here is a simple example of the uses of algebra. Let’s suppose we 
want to find the weight of the sugar in the left pan of the scale, and 
we can’t find a weight which balances it exactly. The 10-pound 
weight is too heavy, the others are too light. We begin by calling 
the weight of the sugar x, which in algebra always stands for the 
“unknown quantity.” 



We now discover that by putting a 4-pound weight beside the sugar, 
the scale balances. Now, a correct algebraic equation is just like 
a balanced scale. It always tells you that the things on one side 
of the equation mark are exactly equal to the things on the other. 
So we can write the equation for this balanced scale as follows: 
x +4 = 10. which means that the weight of the sugar added to the 



An equation, like a scale, will always remain correctly balanced if 
the same quantity is added to or subtracted from both sides at once. 
We may, therefore, subtract 4 from both sides of our equation, thus: 
x _|_ 4_4 = 10— 4. The +4 and the —4 cancel each other, giving 
us x = 10 —4, or x =6, which is our answer. It is just as if we had 
taken off the 4-pound weight from one side of the scale and had broken 
off a 4-pound piece from the 10-pound weight on the other side. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference 


F a c t - / n d e x 

93 


at the end of this 


work 






















ALGEBRA 


Laws of Equations 



The statement bn = 20 is called an equation. The 
“literal” (letter) number n is called the unknown. 
The equation is said to be solved when the correct 
value of the unknown is found. Thus n = 4 is the 
solution of the equation bn = 20. Such a value is 
called a root of the equation. Thus 4 is a root of the 
equation bn = 20 because when 4 is put in place of n 
the equation is true. This is called checking the 
solution. 

Fundamental Laws in Solving Equations 

There are four fundamental laws used in solving 
equations. They are the addition law, the subtrac¬ 
tion law, the multiplication law, and the division law. 
These laws will now be given and illustrated. 

Addition Law. —“If the same number be added to 
both sides of an equation, another equation is ob¬ 
tained.” E.g., in the equation Ax — 2 = 10, if we add 
2 to each side of the equation, the result is Ac = 12. 
We can find x = 3 by dividing both sides of the equa¬ 
tion, Ac = 12, by 4. 

Division Law. —This last step illustrates the use of 
the division law, which says, “If both sides of an 
equation be divided by the same number (excluding 
division by zero), another equation is obtained.” 

Subtraction Law. —“If the same number be sub¬ 
tracted from both sides of an equation, another equa¬ 
tion is obtained.” E.g., in the equation 3x + 4 = 16, 
if we subtract 4 from both sides of the equation, we 
get 3x = 12, whence, by the division law, x = 4. 

Multiplication Law. —“If both sides of an equation 
be multiplied by the same number, another equation 

is obtained.” E. g., in the equation - = 5, if we multi- 

O 

ply both sides of the equation by 3, then x = 15. 

Kinds of Equations and Their Use 

Equations are of two kinds, identical and condi¬ 
tional. An identical equation, or an identity, is an 
equation that has no letters in it, or that is true for 
all values of the letters. Thus 2 + 4 = 6 and 
7x = 10.r — 3x are identities. The identity is the 
declarative sentence of algebra and states that the two 
sides of the equation are the same except for form. A 
conditional equation is an equation which is true only 
for certain values of the unknown. Thus bx + 2 = 12 
only on the condition that x = 2. The conditional 
equation is the interrogative sentence of algebra and 
always asks for what values of the unknown the 
equation will be true. 

The equation is indispensable in solving what are 
commonly known as verbal or thought problems like 
the one on page 93, where it is required to find the 
two parts of a pole 20 feet long. As a rule it is not 
difficult to solve the equation once the correct equa¬ 
tion is obtained, but often one may make a mistake 
in interpreting the conditions of the problem. The 
following important steps in the algebraic solution 
of verbal problems may be helpful: 


(a) In every problem certain facts are given as known 
and one or more as unknown and to be determined. Read 
the problem so as to get these facts clearly in mind. 

(b) In solving the problem denote one of the unknown 
numbers by some symbol, as y. 

(c) Then express all the given facts in algebraic language, 
using the number y as if it, too, were known. 

(d) Find two different expressions which denote the 
same number, and equate them. Join by the sign of 
equality ( = ). 

(e) Solve the equation for the value of the unknown 
number. 

(f) Check the result by re-reading the problem, sub¬ 
stituting the result in the conditions of the problem to see 
if these conditions are satisfied. Note that it is not sufficient 
to check the equation, for you may have written the wrong 
equation to represent the conditions of the problem. 

If the only difference between arithmetic and alge¬ 
bra lay in the fact that letters are used to represent 
numbers instead of the ordinary digits, we should have 
merely literal arithmetic. But when the study of 
algebra is begun new kinds of numbers are introduced 
called relative numbers or signed numbers. In arith¬ 
metic the addition of two numbers is always possible, 
but it is not always possible to subtract. If the sub¬ 
trahend is larger than the minuend we cannot subtract 
in arithmetic—the problem would have, no meaning. 
In algebra, however, subtraction is always possible 
because of signed numbers. Signed numbers are num¬ 
bers which are given two opposite senses or directions. 
These two opposite senses or directions are distin¬ 
guished by calling one number positive and the other 
negative. Either may be called the positive number, 
but the number which has the opposite sense is always 
negative. Thus, if a distance to the right of some 
starting point (called the zero point) is positive, then 
the distance to the left of the zero point is negative. 
All real numbers are usually represented on a line 
called the number line and extending from the zero 
point in two opposite directions. A positive number 
is denoted by +, and a negative number by —. If no 
sign is given it is understood that the number is +. 

The Four Fundamental Operations 

The fundamental operations of addition, subtrac¬ 
tion, multiplication, and division (except by zero) are 
always possible with positive and negative numbers. 

The four laws governing these fundamental opera¬ 
tions are as follows: 

Addition Law. —If the two numbers to be added are 
positive, the sum is clearly positive; if negative, the sum is 
negative. Therefore, to add two algebraic numbers of like 
sign, find the sum of the two numbers arithmetically and prefix 
to the sum their common sign. Thus, the sum of + 5 and 
+ 10 is + 15; of — 7 and — 5 is — 12. If the two numbers 
to be added have opposite signs, find the difference of the 
numbers arithmetically and prefix the sign of the larger 
number. Thus, the sum of + 15 and — 8 is + 7. 

Subtraction Law. —In subtraction we are always concerned 
in finding a number called the difference which when added 
to the subtrahend will give the minuend. Thus, — 4 
subtracted from 6 equals 10 because — 4 10 = 6, and 

- 12 subtracted from - 17 = - 5 because the sum of 

— 12 and —5 equals — 17. The result of subtracting 
any number, say b, is the same as adding - b. Therefore, 
to subtract one algebraic number from another change the 
sign of the subtrahend and add. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

94 






ALGEBRA 


) Coefficients and Exponents 



Multiplication Law. —There are four possible cases of 
the multiplication of positive and negative numbers. 
Illustrations will make the law clear. Since multiplication 
is a short process of addition, ( + 4)( + 3) = ( + 4) + ( + 4) 
+ ( + 4) = + 12 . Likewise ( - 4)( + 3) = ( - 4) + ( - 4) 
+ (— 4) = — 12. Then if we assume that positive 
and negative numbers follow the law for arithmetic numbers, 
and since we know in arithmetic that 3 X 4 = 4 X 3, then 
( + 4)( — ‘3) = ( — 3)( + 4) = - 12. If in multiplying ( - 4) 
by ( — 3) the — 3 were + 3, we should get — 12 as a 
product, but since the multiplier is — 3 we get ( — 4)( — 3) 
= + 12. These examples illustrate the law of signs for 
multiplication which is as follows: The product of two 
algebraic numbers of like signs is positive. The product of 
two algebraic numbers of unlike signs is negative. 

Division Law. —Since in division we are concerned with 
finding one of two numbers called the quotient which when 
multiplied by another number called the divisor will give 
the dividend, it is clear that 

(1) ( + 8 ) -s- ( + 2) = +4, because ( + 2)( + 4) = + 8 . 

(2) ( + 8 ) - 4 - ( - 2) = - 4, because ( — 2) ( — 4) = + 8 . 

(3) ( - 8 ) + ( + 2) = - 4, because ( + 2)( - 4) = - 8 , 
and 

(4) ( _ 8 ) - 4 - ( - 2) = + 4, because ( - 2)( + 4) = - 8 . 

Therefore the law of signs for division is as follows: The 

quotient of two algebraic numbers of like signs is positive. The 
quotient of two algebraic numbers of unlike signs is negative. 

A one-termed number is called a monomial, a; two- 
termed number a binomial, a three-termed number a 
trinomial, and so on. A polynomial is an expression 
containing two or more terms. Thus 3x 2 is a mono¬ 
mial, 2a + 36 2 c is a binomial, 3x 2 + 4x + 6 is a tri¬ 
nomial. Monomials may be added by adding first 
the positive terms and the negative terms and then 
finding the sum of these results. Thus, 27x + 
(- 14x) + ( - llx) + (21x) = -+ 23x. The method 
of adding polynomials is illustrated below. 

9x + 3 y + 2 z 
5x — 4 y + 6 z 
- 3x - 8y - 5z 
llx — 9y + 3z 

In the monomial 2 x 3 y 4 the 2 is called the coefficient 
of the term, and the 3 and 4 are called exponents. The 
exponent indicates how many times the letter is to be 
used as a factor. The degree of a monomial is indi¬ 
cated by the sum of all the exponents in the monomial, 
and the degree of a polynomial is given by the term of 
highest degree in the polynomial. Thus, x 5 + x 3 + 
x 2 + 1 is of the fifth degree in x, and x — 2 xy 2 + y 3 is 
of the third degree in y and first degree in x. The sub¬ 
traction of one polynomial from another is shown below. 
4x2 _ 3 xy + 6 y* 

3x2 — 5 X y — 7 y* 
x 2 + 2x2/ + 132/* 

Type Products 

One of the simplest products is that of multiplying 
a polynomial by a monomial. Before this type can 
be fully understood one must know that when two 
numbers with exponents are multiplied together 
(say a 3 . a 6 ), the product is the number with an ex¬ 
ponent equal to the sum of the original exponents. 
Thus, a 3 . a 5 = a 8 . 

If we multiply a 2 -2ab+3b 2 by 3a, each term of 
the polynomial must be multiplied by the monomial 
and the resulting products added. For example, 3a 
(a 2 —2a&+36 2 ) = 3a 3 -6a 2 6+9a& 2 . The product of 

contained in the Easy Reference 


two polynomials is found by multiplying every term 
of one polynomial by each term of the other poly¬ 
nomial and adding these products. Thus {x 2 +2xy 
+y 2 ) (x+y) =x 3 +3x 2 y-\-3xy 2 +y 3 . 

The work often appears as follows: 

X s + 2x2/ + v 1 

_ x + y 

x 3 + 2 x*2/ + xy' 1 
+ x2 ? /+ 2x2/2 + 2/» 

x* + 3 x 2 2/ + 3x2/2 + 2/ 3 

There are certain type products that one should 
study carefully because this enables him later to see 
the factors of certain expressions more readily. The 
first of these is the product of multiplying a poly¬ 
nomial by a monomial. If one knows clearly that 
2a {3x 2 +4 y + Qbz) = 6 ax 2 + 8 ay +- 12 abz, he can 
more easily find the two factors of 6ax 2 + 8 ay + 
12a6z. The terms of 6ax 2 + 8 ay + 12 abz are said to 
be similar terms because they each contain the factor 
2a. In trying to factor any algebraic expression one 
should therefore always look for a monomial factor 
which is common to all of the terms of the expression. 

The second type product with which one should be 
familiar is the product obtained by multiplying two 
binomials together. The following examples will 
illustrate the method: 

1. {2x +3) (4x+5). 

Solution: 2x + 3 
4x + 5 
8x2 + I 2 x 
+ I Ox + 15 
Sx* + 22x + 15 

2. (3a+5) (2a-8). 

Solution: 3a + 5 
2a -8 
6 a 2 + 10a 

- 24a - 40 
6a 2 — 14a — 40 

3. {by +4) {by -4). 

Solution: by + 4 
5y -4 
252/2 + 202/ 

- 202/ ~ 16 

252/2 - 16 

4. (2x+3) (2x+3). 

Solution: 2x + 3 
2x + 3 
4x2 -|- 6x 
+ 6x + 9 
4x2 + 12x + 9 

If we agree to use the binomials ax+b and cx+d 
to represent any two binomials where a, b, c, and d 
are known numbers like those in the products above, 
then we may discover a short cut in multiplying ax +6 
by cx +d. 

Illustrative Example 

Find the product of {ax + b) and {cx + d). 

Solution: ax + b 

X 

cx + d _ 

acx 2 + bcx 

+ adx +bd 

acx * + {bc + ad) x + bd 

Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

95 




















ALGEBRA 


ALGERIA 



The arrows show the cross-multiplications or cross- 
products whose sum is equal to the middle term. It is 
seen that the first term of the product is the product of the 
first terms of the binomials, that the last term is the product of 
the last terms of the binomials, and that the middle term is the 
sum of the two cross-products. 

Products like those above can all be factored easily 
by inspection or by what is often called the “cut and 
try” method. 

The method consists simply of guessing the correct 
pair of factors from all the possible ones and then 
verifying the result by multiplying the factors to¬ 
gether. The method is illustrated by the following 
example: 

Factor 2x * 2 -f9x + 10. 

Solution: There are four possible pairs of factors, as 
shown below: 

2x —1~ 10 x + 10 x + 5 2x 5 

x + 1 2x + 1 2x + 2 x+ 2 

It is clear that the last pair is the correct one, since the 
sum of the cross-products is 9x. 

It is very important always to be sure that the 
factors obtained are prime numbers. Such factors 
are called prime factors. Incidentally it is important 
to remember that there are some numbers that are 
not factorable, because they are already prime num¬ 
bers. For example, x 2 + 16 and x 2 +2x + 12 are not 
factorable. 

From what has been said one can see that in all 
factoring problems it is important to hold in mind 
three things, namely: 

(1) Try to discover a common monomial factor. 

(2) Find the prime factors by the “cut and try” method. 

(3) Check by multiplying the factors together. 

Division of Algebraic Polynomials 

The process of dividing one algebraic polynomial 
by another is clearly illustrated by a division problem 
from arithmetic. Consider 67,942 +■ 322. 

If we arrange dividend and divisor in the form of 
polynomials, the division may appear in either of the 
following forms: 

60000 + 7000 + 900 + 40 + 2 |300 + 20 + 2 

60000 + 4000 + 400 |200 + 10+1 

3000 + 500 + 40 
3000 + 200 + 20 

300 + 20 + 2 
300 + 20 + 2 

6 . 10 4 + 7 . 10 3 + 9 . 10 2 + 4 . 10 + 2 3 . 10* + 2 . 10 + 2 

6 . 10 4 + 4 . 10 3 + 4 . 102 2 . 102+10+1 

3 . 10 3 + 5 . 10 2 + 4 . 10 

3 . 10*+ 2 , lQi + 2 . 10 

3 . lO 3 + 2 . 10 + 2 

3 . 1Q2+2 . 10+ 2 

The division of algebraic polynomials arranged 
according to either of the ascending or the descending 


power of some letter is similar to the preceding divi¬ 
sion of arithmetical numbers; thus: 

8 y< + 6 y 3 + 9 y 2 + 3 y + 2 Uy 3 + y + 2 
By* + 2 y 3 + 4 y 3 \ 2y 3 + y + 1 

4 2 /s + 5 y 2 + 3 y 
4 ys + 2/2 + 2y 



42/2 + y + 2 


42/2 + y + 2 

or 


a* 

+ b 3 la + b 

a 3 + a 3 b 

|a 2 — ab + 6 s 

— a 3 b 

+ 6 * 

— a 3 b — 

ab 2 


+ ab 3 + 6 * 
+ ab 3 + b 3 


Advantages of Algebra 

In trying to express our ideas we are often impressed 
by the lack of clearness and conciseness in our state¬ 
ments. This is due to the fact that words and phrases 
as instruments for certain kinds of investigations and 
precise statements are often weak and deficient. A 
knowledge of algebra enables one to correct many of 
these shortcomings and to supplement or replace 
words and phrases by symbols. 

For example, if one should want to say “the square 
of the number of books in the library,” he can do this 
quickly by using X 2 where X represents “the number 
of books in the library.” What is more, one can 
perform any of the four fundamental operations on 
X 2 without having to hold in mind all the time what 
X stands for. Thus, the use of symbols constitutes a 
powerful kind of shorthand and furnishes us with a 
method of solving many interesting and important 
problems. 

Again the formula for the area of a triangle, namely, 
A =—, is an arrangement of symbols, clear and con¬ 
cise, which is more effectively handled than the words 
and phrases which the symbols replace. 

ALGERIA. One of the most prosperous and civilized 
parts of Africa is the French possession of Algeria, 
situated on the north coast directly across the 
Mediterranean from the mother country. France 
here has pursued the wise policy of allowing the 
intelligent native Arabs and Berbers to govern them¬ 
selves as far as possible, with the result that the 
natural enmity between Mohammedan and Christian 
has been largely forgotten. In fact Algeria is no 
longer looked upon as a colony, but as a regular 
portion of France, divided into three departments— 
Oran, Constantine, and Algiers—each of which sends 
one senator and two representatives to the French 
parliament in Paris. The natives have their own 
courts and cadis, or judges, under the supreme 
authority of the French governor-general. 

Resources of Algeria 

Algeria lies between Morocco on the west and 
Tunis on the east. On the south the civil boundaries 
extend about 350 miles inland, but the desert districts 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

96 
































A Native of Algeria 


) The French in Algeria 

under Algerian military rule stretch 400 miles farther 
into the Sahara. Two spurs of the great Atlas 
mountain range cross Algeria. The district along the 
seacoast, called “The Tell,” is well watered by rivers 

and consists of highly 
fertile plains and val¬ 
leys, where French and 
native farmers raise 
wheat, barley, oats, 
corn, potatoes, beans, 
tobacco, and flax. Here 
also, in the warmer 
lowlands, thrives a 
great fruit industry, 
producing quantities 
of dates, oranges, man¬ 
darins, citrons, bana¬ 
nas, pomegranates, 
almonds, olives, and 
figs. Enormous sup¬ 
plies of wine are also 
manufactured every 
year. 

South of The Tell 
are high plateau lands where millions of sheep and 
goats and thousands of cattle find pasturage. Beyond 
is the main Atlas ridge, enclosing smaller areas of 
rich lands, largely cultivated by the Kabyle tribes. 
A further stage brings us to the desert which is 
barren except for the extraordinarily fertile oases, 
most of them pro¬ 
duced by artesian 
wells. 

The mountains 
of Algeria them¬ 
selves yield impor¬ 
tant quantities of 
iron, zinc, lead, 
copper, mercury, 
antimony, and 
petroleum, while the 
nearby seas pro¬ 
duce sardines, an¬ 
chovies, and tunny 
for export. The silk 
trade is also exten¬ 
sive. 

Algeria .has 3,500 
miles of excellent 
government roads, 
which are not only 
of immense com¬ 
mercial value, but 
which make the 
beautifully pic¬ 
turesque country a 
paradise for the 
thousands of motor¬ 
ists attracted every year by the excellent climate. A 
network of more than 2,000 miles of railway lines pene- 


ALHAMBRA[ 


trates to all parts of the province, and each year sees 
the rails pushed farther southward into the desert. 

The capitals of the departments and the three most 
important towns are: Algiers (population, 172,000), 
Oran (123,000), and Constantine (65,000). Algiers 
presents a strange combination of an ultra-modem 
city and an ancient Arab settlement; it has a fine 
harbor, distinguished by the fact that it was the first 
ever constructed with blocks of concrete. The sub¬ 
urbs are filled with beautiful villas and splendid 
hotels, which are always crowded during the winter 
season. 

The Famous Foreign Legion 

In Algeria is the headquarters of the famous Foreign 
Legion of France, recruited from adventurous spirits 
from all parts of the world, which so distinguished 
itself in the World War of 1914-18. In this war 
Algeria not only provided many men to the French 
armies, but contributed also large supplies of food, 
principally mutton for the French and British armies, 
and war supplies of many sorts. 

The French seizure of Algeria originated as the 
result of an altercation, in 1827, over a debt between 
France and the Algerian government, when the 
ruler, Dey Hussein, struck the French consul with a 
“fly-swatter.” War resulted, and in 1830 the town of 
Algiers surrendered. Population, 4,750,000 natives, 
752,000 Europeans. 

Alhambra. The marvelously beautiful residence 
and fortress of the Moorish rulers of Granada, situ- 



y\r. Lon&lude 


. 0vf( 

’* 

l a 0 Ruined Cities 

Of -S jrl -£,LorK}ilude 1 ol 


This relief map of Algeria and the neighboring territory shows how the face of the whole land would look if viewed 
from above. Near the northern coast you see the region which contains the well-watered and fertile plains and 
valleys called “The Tell,” where the farmers raise grains, tobacco, and flax; and where grow oranges, olives, and 
figs. South of this the land is not sufficiently fertile for profitable fruit or grain farming and is given over to 
pasturage. After this comes the desert, where nothing grows except in the oases. 

ated on a hill overlooking that city. It was begun 
in 1248 and completed in 1314. (See Spain.) 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

97 












Alkali. Caustic soda and caustic potash are fa¬ 
miliar examples of the important group of chemical 
compounds called alkalies, which have the property 
of neutralizing acids. They are extensively used in 
soap-making, dyeing, and many other industries. 
(Sec Acids and Alkalies.) 

Allen, Ethan (1737-1789). Soon after the battle 
of Lexington this Vermont frontiersman marched 
against the fortress of Ticonderoga on Lake Cham¬ 
plain commanding the road from Canada to New 
York. Landing with 93 men just before daybreak, 
he surprised the fort, getting inside and forming his 
men on parade ground before they woke the sleeping 
garrison with a shout of victory. The British com¬ 
mander rushed out in his nightclothes and asked: 
“What does this mean?” He was ordered to sur¬ 
render. “In whose name?” he asked. “In the name 
of the Great Jehovah and the Con¬ 
tinental Congress,” replied Allen. 

Ethan Allen was a type of the 
rugged unlettered pioneer, ready to 
fight at a moment’s notice. We 
first find him in 1771 at the head 
of the “Green Mountain Boys,” a 
force organized to resist the author¬ 
ity of the colony of New York in 
the “New Hampshire Grants” of 
Vermont, in which he lived. When 
the colonies came into conflict with 
the mother country, in 1775, Allen 
with his men was as ready to resist 
the authority of England as he had 
been to resist that of New York. 

After capturing Ticonderoga, Allen 
joined the expedition against Canada, 
but he was captured near Montreal 
and held until 1778. Upon his 
release he was made brigadier-general 
of the Vermont militia and was also appointed a dele¬ 
gate to persuade Congress to admit Vermont as a 
state into the Union. In this last he failed, and as 
a result Allen and his brother Ira entered into a 
correspondence with the British in Canada upon 
which an unsubstantiated charge of treason was later 
based. He did not live to see Vermont become 
a state in the Union in 1791. 

ALLIGATOR. One of the ugliest and most for¬ 
midable-looking of all animals is the alligator, a large 
reptile which inhabits the waters of the southern 
Mississippi and Florida. It sometimes reaches a 
length of 15 or 20 feet, and it has a body covered with 
an armor of horny scales. Alligators have been 
known to show great boldness and ferocity in attack¬ 
ing human beings, sometimes seizing them and carry¬ 
ing them away; but in places where they have been 
much hunted they have become timid. 

Related to the Crocodile 

The alligator is related to the crocodile of Asia and 
Africa, but differs from it in having a broader head 
and a blunter snout. Also, its lower teeth fit into 

For any s u bj ect not found in its 


pits in the upper jaw, while those of the crocodile 
slide outside of the jaw and are visible. 

One species of alligator has been found in China, 
but most of these animals live in the rivers and swamps 
of the southern United States and South America. 
The long powerful tail enables the alligator to swim 
with great ease and rapidity, but owing to its short 
legs and unwieldy body, its movements on land are 
slow and difficult. Its chief food is fish, but it is also 
fond of small reptiles, and devours dogs and other 
quadrupeds when it can get them. 

What a Queer Way to Build a Nest! 

During the winter months the alligator buries itself 
in the mud, but with the coming of warm weather it 
reappears. It may then be seen basking in the sun, 
and at times the loud roar of the males reverberates 
like thunder. 


The female alligator lays a great number of eggs 
with hard shells, which in size and general appearance 
resemble hens’ eggs. The nests are built in a curious 
manner. Along the bank is spread a layer of mud and 
grass or leaves; on this is placed a layer of eggs, then 
another layer of mud and grass about seven or eight 
inches in thickness, then another layer of eggs care¬ 
fully covered, and so on, until often 30 or more eggs 
are deposited. Although the eggs are hatched by the 
heat of the sun and the decaying vegetable matter, 
the mother alligator watches the nest carefully. As 
soon as the young, which are helpless little creatures 
about eight inches long, are hatched, she leads them 
to the water and takes care of them as a hen does her 
brood of chickens, until they are strong enough to 
defend themselves. The whining and yelping of the 
young as they follow the mother about resemble that 
of young puppies. 

Alligators have been so much hunted for sport and for 
their hides, which make a valuable leather, that their 
numbers have greatly decreased. Their horny scales cannot 
be penetrated except by the bullet of a high-power rifle, but 
they are easily wounded behind the foreleg and in the belly. 

\ Ip ha betical place see information 


MRS. ALLIGATOR AND HER “CRATE” OF EGGS 



It does look very much as if Mrs. Alligator had put her eggs in a rude sort of crate and 
intended to take them to market, doesn’t it? But, as you learn in the article, this is her 
way of making her nest, which at the same time is to serve as an incubator for bringing 
the baby alligators into the world. You can see, too, that although she doesn’t hatch 
her eggs, she keeps close watch for any intruders that are disposed to disturb them. 


98 







During the winter months, when they are in a torpid condi¬ 
tion, they are often dug out of the mud and killed. Scientific 
name of common alligator, Alligator mississippiensis. (See 
Crocodile.) 

ALLOYS'. A good tool steel, according to the 
saying, is much like a good man, for it must be able 
to “get hot without losing its temper.” When 
machine lathes for cutting hard steel shafts and the 
thousands of other accurately turned and gauged 
parts in modern mechanism came into general use, 
a great need arose for tougher tool steels, for the 
ordinary chisels and similar tools softened and lost 
their “temper” when the friction of cutting heated 
them. The necessity of keeping the tools cool limited 
the speed of the machines. 

What Robert Mushet Found 

One day in 1868 an English metallurgist, named 
Robert F. Mushet, noticed that a steel tool with 
which he was cutting metal at a lathe did not lose its 
edge even when heated red hot by friction. He had 
the steel analyzed and found that it was an alloy or 
mixture of steel and tungsten, a metal little known in 
those days. Since then it has been found that certain 
other metals, when mixed with steel in just the right 
proportions, will give the alloy this same quality. 
Among them are chromium, vanadium, cobalt, man¬ 
ganese, and molybdenum. The discovery of these 
“high-speed” steels, as they are called, revolutionized 
metal-working the world over. During the World 
War of 1914-18, the British Government discovered a 
new “super-steel” alloy for making tools, which it is 
claimed takes off metal faster and keeps its edge longer 
than any other tool metal known. Its composition is 
molybdenum, 5.75 per cent; chromium, 2.79 per cent; 
vanadium, 1.29 per cent; carbon, .75 per cent; and 
the rest pure iron. 

Some lathe tool alloys contain no steel at all. Thus 
chromium, tungsten, and cobalt in the proper pro¬ 
portions make “star-stone,” or “stellite,” which not 
only keeps a hard cutting edge but gets tougher as 
it gets hotter. 

Such “high-speed” tools enable us in turn to mill 
the hardest and toughest possible alloys in building 
our machinery and of course the stronger our mate¬ 
rials, the lighter and better become our machines. 

Although nearly all metals are used in alloy form, 
the alloys of steel and iron are by far the most numer¬ 
ous and the most useful. Nor does the nature of an 
alloy depend alone on the kind of metals used, for 
often it is greatly altered by varying the proportions 
of the same metals. 

It is possible for great flying machines to skim 
through the air because engines can be built of these 
new alloys that weigh no more than two pounds per 
horse-power. When a proportion of manganese is 
added to steel, it becomes so hard that it cannot be 
machined, but has to be cast or ground into shape. 
This steel makes armor plate that cannot be pierced 
except with projectiles pointed with the same material. 
The same is true of molybdenum steel, which because 


it does not crack is much used for gun linings, air¬ 
plane struts, and propeller shafts. 

Chrome steel, hard and elastic, is valuable for files, 
projectiles, and balls for ball-bearings. 

Use in Electrical Appliances 

The finely drawn wire in our electric toasters, which 
leaps to cherry redness when the electric current is 
turned on, is an alloy of nickel and chromium. The 
discovery of this alloy made electrical appliances 
practical, as it provided a heating element which did 
not burn out easily. 

Men have long known that the admixture or alloy of two 
or more metals serves useful purposes which neither alone 
could serve. Thus pure copper is not suitable for many 
purposes, but when it is alloyed with zinc it forms brass, 
which is harder than copper and tarnishes less readily. 
Gold and silver, when pure, are very soft and easily worn 
away. They are usually hardened, therefore, by alloying 
them with other metals in different proportions. “Sterling” 
silver for example is composed of 9.25 parts silver and .75 
parts copper. 

An interesting alloy is type metal, from which is cast the 
type used in printing books and newspapers. It is composed 
of lead and antimony, sometimes with the addition of small 
parts of tin and bismuth. Most substances expand with 
heat, but the opposite is true of type metal. In cooling it 
expands and fills the finest details of the type-mold, so that 
the letters print sharp and clear. 

Other alloys are bronze, which contains copper and tin, 
and sometimes zinc, aluminum, or other metals; German 
silver, made of copper, zinc, and nickel; pewter, made of tin 
and copper; babbitt metal, a special mixture of tin, copper, 
and antimony; and solder, which is made of various alloys 
of tin, lead, zinc, copper, bismuth, gold, and silver. Amal¬ 
gams are alloys which contain mercury. 

Almond ( a'mond ). Although the almond tree has 
long been cultivated on account of its beautiful 
flowers and delicious nuts, we never see it in a 
wild state. Even as far back as Bible times it was 
grown and highly prized in Syria and Palestine. It 
probably originated in this region or somewhere along 
the Mediterranean, and strange as it may seem it 
belongs to the great rose family, which includes most 
of the fruit trees, and is a close relative of the plum. 

The almond tree is of moderate size, reaching a 
height of from 20 to 30 feet. The delicate white or 
pink flowers appear early in the spring and are 
followed by the leaves, which are oval, pointed, and 
notched at the edges. The fruit has a soft outer coat 
enclosing the shell, within which is the seed or kernel. 

The tree which has white blossoms produces bitter 
almonds; the one with pink blossoms bears sweet 
almonds. Bitter almonds are used in the manufacture 
of flavoring extract and various drugs used in medi¬ 
cine. Sweet almonds are classified as hard-shelled 
and soft-shelled. The almond of commerce belongs 
mainly to the soft-shelled group and those with the 
thinnest shells are called “paper-shells.” Sweet 
almonds are highly valued as a food, as they contain 
a large amount of nutriment. They are eaten raw 
or “blanched” and are also much used in cakes and 
candies. 

Almonds are grown extensively in western Asia, in the 
Mediterranean countries of Europe, and in California. Even 
where, owing to climatic conditions, the almond does not 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

99 







ALPHABET 


ALPACA 



bear fruit, it is often planted for ornamental purposes. The 
dwarf almond, which is a native of Russia, is much used for 
thispurpose. Scientific name of almond, Amy gdalus communis. 

ALPACA. If you should climb 16,000 dizzy feet 
above the sea to the lofty tablelands of Chile or Peru, 
where some majestic peak of the Andes— 

Giant of the Western Star, 

Looks from his throne of clouds 
O’er half the world— 

you would find few other living creatures to share the 
solitude with you. But look! Do you see those gray 
and tan mice over there against the background of 
giant cliffs? As they come nearer they turn into 
woolly sheep-like animals the size of deer, and it 
almost takes your breath away to watch them 
scamper sure-footedly over 
bowlders, up steep crags, and 
along yawning gorges. 

These are the alpacas, semi- 
domesticated animals related to 
the camel and the llama, millions 
of pounds of whose strong silky 
elastic wool, clipped every year 
or two by the native Indians, 
are shipped to Europe and 
America. His long warm coat— 
sometimes two feet long—en¬ 
ables the hardy alpaca to 
endure the snow storms and icy 
winds of his lofty home. He is 
extremely active and alert to 
dangers, and Nature helps him 
to overcome many difficulties. 

His cushioned feet with their 
hard curved toe-nails help him 
to climb steep crags with safety; 
his long flexible camel-like neck 
and pointed muzzle enable him 
to reach herbage growing on 
high ledges; and his strong teeth 
help him to chew the tough 
leaves and stalks; while his 
queerly constructed stomach 
with its reservoir for fluids 
makes it possible for him to 
endure hunger and thirst for considerable periods. 
All this fits him to thrive in an altitude that would 
make us ill. 

The vicuna is a wild variety of the same group, 
smaller than the llama but larger than the alpaca. 
It is trapped in herds on mountain heights by the 
Indians for its wool, which is one of the lightest and 
warmest known. 

Genuine alpaca cloth is very firm, strong, and lustrous, 
closely resembling mohair. Most of the cloth sold under 
the name of alpaca, however, contains little or no alpaca 
wool, being a mixture of cotton and wool with a hard shining 
surface. Most of the so-called vicuna goods is a very soft 
fabric of wool and cotton. Scientific name of alpaca, Lama 
pacos; of vicuna, Lama vicunia. 

Alphabet. Of course you know your A B C’s 
or you could not be reading this. But do you know 


their wonderful history? Do you know that A was 
once the picture of an eagle, and B of a crane (some 
say a house)? That N was the water’s waves and 
D a hand? That R was a man’s mouth and 0 his eye? 

Do you know, moreover, why it is that so many 
people can read in lands where English, French, or 
German is spoken and so few in China? Indeed, it 
is not because European peoples prize education 
more highly than do the Chinese, for nowhere in the 
world is a scholar more honored than in that mys¬ 
terious land. The reason is that a Chinese must 
know about 3,000 different signs to read even an 
ordinary Chinese book, and really learned Chinese 
must know over 40,000. Every thing or idea in 
Chinese writing has its separate 
sign. In Europe and America, 
on the other hand, we need to 
learn only the 26 letters or so 
that make up our alphabets. 
This great advantage of the 
alphabet arises from the fact 
that its letters now represent 
certain sounds, instead of 
things, by combining which we 
form syllables and words. 

First of All Alphabets 
Alphabetic writing was de¬ 
veloped from syllabic writing, 
which in turn grew out of 
ideographic or picture writing, 
such as the Chinese still use 
(see Writing). The Egyptians 
apparently were the first to 
invent an alphabet, about the 
year 3000 b.c., although it 
never displaced their hiero¬ 
glyphic (ideographic) writing. 
The ancient Aegean people of 
the island of Crete also possessed 
an alphabet at an early date. 
But it was the Phoenician 
traders of Tyre and Sidon first, 
and the Aramaean merchants 
of Damascus later, who spread 
the knowledge of alphabetic writing east and west, 
in Europe and in Asia. Today the use of alphabetic 
writing is general throughout the whole world outside 
of China. 

Altogether there have been some 400 different 
alphabets since the days of the Phoenicians; and at 
the present time there are about 50, not counting 
slight variations due to dialects. None of these 
alphabets is perfect. “The ideal alphabet,” as one 
authority puts it, “would indicate one sound by one 
symbol, and not more than one sound by the same 
symbol.” As all our English vowels have several 
sounds, some of our consonants two sounds that are 
duplicated by other letters, and a few have the 
sound values of diphthongs, the English alphabet 
falls short of this ideal. 


A MOUNTAIN COUSIN OF THE CAMEL 



Here you see the Alpaca, in his long woolly coat 
that protects him so well against the snow storms 
and icy winds of his lofty home. You can see, too, 
how handy that neck of his must be in reaching 
food on the top shelves of his “pantry,”—the rocky 
ledges of the mountains. 


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ALPS 


| Advantages of the Alphabet 



All the alphabets of Europe were derived, either 
directly or through the Latin, from the Greek, which 
in turn had its source in the Phoenician. The 
Phoenician alphabet had 21 or 22 letters, represent¬ 
ing consonant sounds. The vowels a, e, i, and o 
were present, but were used as “aspirates” similar 
to our h. Centuries were required to bring this 
imperfect alphabet up to the requirements of the 
classic period of Greek 
literature. The aspirates 
were converted into true 
vowels, superfluous sounds 
were dropped, and q and 
x replaced diphthong com¬ 
binations. In its final 
form the Greek alphabet 
of Athens had 24 letters. 

How We Got Our Alphabet 

The Latin or Roman 
alphabet, which came into 
use in Italy about the 
6th or 5th century b.c., 
became the medium for 
the classical literature of 
Rome. The oldest Roman 
inscriptions show the 
original Greek letters in 
simplified forms. Some of 
the Greek letters are en¬ 
tirely omitted, so that 
the Latin alphabet con¬ 
sisted of only 21 letters. 

The five additional letters 
of our English alphabet 
arose from the introduc¬ 
tion of z, the differentia¬ 
tion of i and j, and the 
expansion of u into v, w, 
and y. The German 
alphabet also comes from 
the Latin, but the letters 
retain the queer Gothic 
shapes of the Middle Ages. 

The Russian alphabet, 
which today has 35 char¬ 
acters, was derived indi¬ 
rectly from the Greek, 
through the ancient 
“Cyrillic” alphabet, in¬ 
vented by Cyril in the 9th century a.d. in order 
to translate the Gospels into the language of the 
Slavs of Bulgaria and Moravia. There are also 
separate alphabets for Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, 
Sanskrit, etc. 

As trade and travel bring the nations of the earth 
into closer relations, there is a growing tendency 
everywhere to adopt the Roman alphabet. The 
Japanese have begun to use it for commercial pur¬ 
poses, although their literature is still written in 
Chinese characters, and China itself has taken some 


steps to abandon its ancient system and adopt 
alphabetic writing. 

Alps. Nowhere else in the world are high 
mountain ranges so thickly populated as the Alps. 
Other ranges lift their eternal peaks in a solitude 
little troubled by man. But in the Alps men cluster 
in the valleys, and their tiny chalets with wide-pro¬ 
jecting eaves, like doll-houses, cling to the steep slopes. 

The Alps are quite 
different in appearance 
from any mountains in 
America. The Alleghe¬ 
nies are wooded or grass- 
covered knobs and ridges 
and the Rockies and 
Sierras are bare and bold, 
standing out in sharp 
relief in the crystal air. 
The Alps with towering 
snow-clad peaks are often 
covered and swathed in 
veils and bands of soft 
mist that shift and change 
color in the changing 
light. Only rarely do the 
peaks emerge, visible in 
their entirety. This 
means that the rain and 
snowfall in the Alps are 
much heavier than in our 
western mountains. In¬ 
deed the Alps are a great 
reservoir from which four 
great river systems—the 
Rhine, the Rhone, the 
Danube, and the Po— 
are fed perpetually, even 
in the dryest season. 

On the high peaks more 
snow falls each year than 
is melted on the spot; and 
this snow accumulates in 
valleys and is gradually 
formed into ice, which 
descends the slopes of the 
mountains in the form of 
glaciers and feeds these 
rivers. There are more 
than 1,000 of these glaci¬ 
ers, most of them very small. Few of them are as 
much as three miles long and the great majority are 
less than one. One of the largest and perhaps the 
most beautiful is the Mer de Glace (“Sea of Ice”), on 
the northern slope of Mont Blanc. The countless 
waterfalls on the lower levels supply practically 
unlimited water-power. 

The Alps cover an area about as large as Illinois and 
Indiana put together. The republic of Switzerland 
includes the center of the Alps, but they thrust their 
spurs and sentinel peaks into France, Italy, Austria, 



This table shows plainly how we got our A B C’s from the Egyp¬ 
tians, by way of the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans. 
“A,” for example, was first the picture of an eagle (or ibis). Then 
this picture became simplified, step by step, until finally it took 
the form in which we have it. 


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1 ALPS 


ALSACE-LORRAINE 





and Germany. The higher peaks, of which there are 
a large number, rise out of a series of lower chains and 
foothills to great heights—Mont Blanc, the “mon¬ 
arch of mountains” as Lord Byron calls it, being 


THE EIGER, MOENCH, AND JUNGFRAU 



These three noble peaks, all over 13,000 feet, present one of the 
most famous views in the Bernese Oberland. Far to the right in 
the picture is the Jungfrau, which gets its name (meaning “maiden”) 
from its virgin purity, enswathed in a dazzling mantle of eternal snow. 

15,782 feet high. On the Italian side the mass of the 
Alps falls steeply into the Italian plain. On the other 
sides the descent is more gentle. 

Why the Alps are Easy to Cross 

Although the peaks of the Alps are much crowded, 
no other so lofty mountains are so easily crossed. 
Winding roads lead up through deep-cut valleys to 
many passes (Mont Cenis, Great St. Bernard, St. 
Gotthard, Brenner, etc.). The Romans knew a num¬ 
ber of the passes well and often made use of them. 
Through the passes the northern barbarians de¬ 
scended on the Roman Empire from the forests of 
Germany, and through them Hannibal and Napoleon 
led their conquering armies. Today the St. Gotthard, 
Simplon, Mont Cenis, and other passes have been 
pierced by railway tunnels. 

The Alps, particularly the Swiss Alps and the 
Austrian Tyrol, have an irresistible attraction for 
tourists from all over the world. Now that travel 
has been made easy many thousands of people each 
year go to Lucerne, to Interlaken—where the Jung¬ 
frau (“Maiden”) Mountain pierces the clouds in vir¬ 
gin purity—to Chamonix, below Mont Blanc, and 
to dozens of other beautiful places. And each year 
athletic travelers, with alpenstocks, ropes, and native 
guides, make the difficult ascent of the Matterhorn 
and other famous peaks. Many pleasure resorts 
with enormous hotels have been built, especially 
near the quiet gemlike lakes, rimmed by mountain 
and forest. Lakes Geneva, Lucerne, Como, Garda, 
and Maggiore are famous for their beauty, and many 
smaller lakes nestle in the valleys. For tourists who 
prefer to motor over the passes instead of going by 
train, carriage roads that are marvels of engineering 
have been blasted out of the rock, stone bridges 
thrown across torrents, and long walls constructed 


to stop avalanches and guard precipices. High on 
the slope at the Great St. Bernard Pass, the monks 
of St. Bernard live in their centuries-old monastery. 
During every storm their bells peal out, and their big 
heroic dogs go forth to rescue travelers lost in the 
snow. (See Switzerland.) 

The Alps are usually divided by geographers into seven 
divisions, the Maritime, the Cottian, the Graian, the 
Pennine, the Lepontine, the Rhaetian, and the Noric Alps. 
They contain relatively few minerals of commercial value. 

Alsace-Lorraine ( al-sas-ld-ran '), France. 
This land, which is so often spoken of as a single 
territory, is in reality composed of two regions quite 


THE MATTERHORN 



Though the lordly Matterhorn is not the highest peak of the Alps 
(14,782 feet), its imposing shape and bold outline make it one of 
the most awe-inspiring. So steep are its rocky sides in many 
places that snow never finds lodgment. Only three of the party of 
seven that first scaled its summit in 1865 survived; four fell thousands 
of feet down a precipice. 

distinct in geography and history. Northeastern 
Lorraine is a part of the old province of Lorraine, two- 
thirds of which remained in French hands after the 
Franco-Prussian War. It is separated from Alsace 
by the Vosges Mountains. 

Alsace, after a stormy history marked by many 
medieval wars, became definitely a part of France 
in the 17th century during the reign of Louis XIV. 
Lying in the trough of the River Rhine, between the 
steep scarp of the Vosges Mountains to the west and 
the Black Forest to the east, its plain forms a natural 

alphabetical place see information 


For any subject not found in its 







1 Grandfather’s Day of Triumph 


ALSACE-LORRAINE 


highway between France and Germany. It is 
generally a fertile land, and rich in timber. Its oil 
field at Pechelbronn—discovered in the course of the 
World War—and its potash deposits west of Miil- 
hausen are of great economic importance. Although 
the language of the people in the country districts 
is a dialect of German, their sentiments have been 
French since the days of Napoleon. 

Lorraine has been French in language and in spirit 
since the 12th century. The province extends from 
the Vosges to Champagne. The part seized by 
Germany included the chief city of Metz, which was 
strongly fortified, and enough of the territory to the 
west to protect this military position. In this 
territory lay a large part of the rich iron ore deposits 
of Briey between Metz and Longwy. These and the 
coal deposits in the Saar valley form the chief wealth 
of this region. Cereal crops, however, grow in 
abundance and many manufactories flourish. 

Every effort was made during the period of German 


rule to stamp out the French language and French 
sentiment, but without avail. When the World War 
broke out in 1914, many Alsatians and Lorrainers 
enlisted in the French armies, although they knew 
that if they were captured they would be shot as 
traitors by the Germans. When the United States 
entered the war, it was with the distinct understanding 
that among the things for which it fought was, as 
President Wilson said, to “ right the wrong done by 
Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine.” 
(See map in article on France.) 

The city of Strasbourg contains a cathedral which is a 
fine example of Gothic architecture. Built in the 13th and 
14th centuries, it rises high above the clustered mass of 
peaked roofs which forms the older part of the town; it 
contains a famous clock, 30 feet high, with many automatic 
figures which move at certain hours and days. The import¬ 
ant university of Strasbourg was founded in 1567. Lying 
as it does on the main roads of travel between France, 
Germany, and Switzerland. Strasbourg has been of military 
and commercial importance ever since Roman legions made 
it their headquarters. Population, about 180,000. 


How the Tricolor Came Back to Metz 



N an ancient house on a crooked street 
near the famous “French gate” of the 
fortress city of Metz in Lorraine, an old 
white-haired man rose before dawn on the 
morning of November 19, 1918, and mounted to his 
attic by candle light. From a dark corner under the 
steep slope of the eaves, he dragged out a carefully 
wrapped package, thick with dust. As he opened it 
with trembling fingers, he 
started to hum a soldier’s 
song of long ago. 

Out of the package came 
strange garments—a long 
dark-blue coat, a heavy loose 
pair of red trousers, old worn 
boots, and a wrinkled cap 
with a flat red crown and 
a square straight visor. The 
old man slipped on this odd 
costume, and, as he straight¬ 
ened up painfully in a vain 
effort to stretch the seams, he 
smiled, for a long-forgotten 
gesture had come back to 
him. Instinctively the fingers 
of his right hand had closed 
over the edge of the sleeve, 
and with the frayed blue cuff he was polishing one by 
one the double row of brass buttons on his thin chest. 

But daylight had come, and he must hurry. 
Down the creaking stair he went to a small room where 
a boy was sleeping. He shook him by the shoulder. 

“My boy, this is the day. Get up.” 

The boy rubbed his eyes and stared sleepily at the 
strange figure. 

“You haven’t forgotten the song, have you, my 
boy?” asked the old man. 



“No, grandfather. Shall I sing it now?” 

“No, I will tell you when to sing. But hurry now. 
You must come with me.” 

It was a cold cloudy day as the long column of 
soldiers in gray-blue uniforms marched up the west 
road leading through the “French gate” into Metz. 
At their head rode the great General Philippe Petain 
who had just learned that he was to be made that day 
a Marshal of France for his celebrated victories in 
the World War. Eight days before, the Germans, 
driven back by the hammering blows of French, 
Americans, and British, had waved the white flag of 
surrender, and this was the vanguard of France, come 
to take back the old provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. 

Drums were beating and banners were waving as 
the soldiers swung through the big gate. Men in the 
crowd shouted “Vive la France!” and women cried 
in joy at the sight of the tricolored flag, which had 
been seen there for the last time in 1871, when the 
Germans took possession after the disastrous close 
of the Franco-Prussian War. 

But a young gray-blue officer noticed on the edge of 
the throng an old man in an ancient uniform standing 
silently at salute. And by his side a little boy, 
whose tiny voice was almost lost in the crowd, was 
singing over and over again ‘La Marseillaise’. The 
young officer stiffened to attention and returned the 
salute. 

“You are an old soldier?” he asked. 

“I was with Bazaine in ’70, my captain,” replied 
the old man. 

“And since then?” 

The old man pulled a tattered sheet of paper from 
his pocket and handed it to the young officer, who 
read in the faded writing the famous declaration 
made in 1871 by the representatives of Alsace and' 
northeastern Lorraine, when they learned their na- 


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ALSACE-LORRAINE 


ALUMINUM| 



tive land had been 
ceded to Germany: 

“We hereby pro¬ 
claim the inviolable 
right of Alsatians 
and Lorrainers to 
remain members of 
the French nation, 
and we swear and 
make oath, for our¬ 
selves, our children, 
and our children’s 
children, to vindi¬ 
cate that right 
eternally, by every 
means and against 
every usurper.” 

The old man 
pointed to the boy 
who was still singing the song of France. “That is 
my grandson—a true Frenchman,” he said. “My 
son—he was with you at Verdun. He cannot be 
here now.” 


“But you, and 
this uniform?” in¬ 
quired the young 
officer gently. 

“I?” said the old 
man proudly. “I, 
my captain, have 
been holding Metz 
for France for 47 
years.” 

It was a week 
later that General 
Gouraud entered 
the city of Stras¬ 
bourg, capital of 
what had recently 
been the German 
province of Alsace- 
Lorraine, and 
officially took over again for France all the land lost 
in 71. Many soldiers whose fathers had lived in 
the “lost provinces” were in Gouraud’s army. Cheers 
and tears of joy greeted their homecoming. 


THE TRICOLOR ONCE MORE I 


Here we see the French soldiers taking possession of a town in Alsace at the close 
of the World War in 1918. Every house is gay with garlands and bunting, and 
the French tricolored flag, banished since 1871, is flying everywhere. One house, 
you notice, is also flying the flags of the United States and Great Britain. 


ALUM. Touch a piece of alum to your lips and 
it puckers your mouth. This is because it is an 
astringent, which means a substance that binds or 
contracts the tissues. It is this property which gives 
alum its value in medicine and the arts, and likewise 
its injurious effects when taken internally in any 
considerable quantity. 

Alum is what is known in chemistry as a double 
salt, the two salts which compose it being usually 
sulphate of aluminum and sulphate of potassium or of 
ammonium. It forms in colorless eight-sided crystals, 
which contain much water. If it is heated sufficiently 
the water will boil out, leaving a powdery mass 
known as burnt alum. 

Among the simpler uses of alum in medicine may 
be mentioned its application to stop bleeding and as 
a remedy for canker sores. One of its important 
industrial uses is as a mordant, or “fixing” substance 
in dyeing. The cloth is wet with a solution of alum, 
which bites into the cloth and makes the dye “fast.” 

Mixed in milk, alum helps in the separation of 
butter. Bakers formerly used it to whiten their 
bread, and it is used quite extensively in the manu¬ 
facture of baking powder (see Baking Powder). 
Housewives sometimes use it in canning to preserve 
the shape and color of the fruit. If added in small 
quantities to turbid water, it will in a few minutes 
make the water perfectly clear. Thus it is sometimes 
used, either with or without lime, in filtering and 
settling tanks in city waterworks. 

Alum is found to some extent in a natural state, but most 
of it is manufactured. It is obtained from alum-stone or 
alunite by a process of roasting. In the Middle Ages the 
alum used in Europe came from lands in Asia held by the 
Mohammedans. But in the 15th century valuable mines 
of alum stone were discovered at Tolfa, in a district in 
southern Italy ruled by the pope. 


ALU'MINUM. The most abundant of all the metallic 
elements in the earth’s surface is aluminum, and 
among all substances it is only exceeded in abundance 
by oxygen and silicon. Yet until 20 years or so ago 
nobody had ever seen a piece of the aluminum kitchen¬ 
ware which is now so common, and few knew that 
there was such a metal. 

The reason is that aluminum is never found in a 
native state, but always combined with other ele¬ 
ments. Granite, felspar, mica, and clay contain much 
aluminum; garnets are a silicate of calcium and 
aluminum; turquoises contain it; and alums, which 
derive their name from this metal, are mostly salts of 
it. But the chief commercial source of aluminum is a 
mineral called bauxite (pronounced boz' It, from Baux, 
France). Most of the bauxite mined in the United 
States comes from Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia. 

This silvery satiny metal is exceedingly light in 
weight, yet in hardness and tensile strength it is 
equal to any metal except steel. It can be drawn 
into wires as fine as those of copper and can be 
hammered into foil like gold-leaf. Like lead it is easily 
molded, leaving the molds with a glass-like surface 
which tarnishes very slightly. It is non-magnetic 
and hence is very useful in electrical work. 

Aluminum, however, is difficult to “machine” 
because it sticks to the tools, but an alloy with 
magnesium (called “magnalium”) has easy working 
qualities. Copper-aluminum bronze, containing 5 to 
12 per cent of aluminum, is easily fusible. An alloy, 
called “duralumin,” consisting of 96 parts aluminum, 
three parts copper, and one part magnesium, was 
extensively used in the World War for making shells, 
helmets, grenades, and camp equipment. Pure 
aluminum is also used, on account of its strength 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

104 










Important Uses of Aluminum 


AMAZON 



and lightness, for airplane and automobile parts. 
The difficulty of welding or soldering aluminum, 
which formerly limited its use, has now been overcome. 

The great affinity of aluminum for oxygen makes 
it useful for producing extraordinarily high temper¬ 
atures. When a mixture (called thermit) of powdered 
aluminum and iron oxide is ignited, the aluminum and 
oxygen unite with such vigor and rapidity that tre¬ 
mendous heat is produced—about 3,000 degrees 
Centigrade (5,432 Fahrenheit). The iron is instant¬ 
ly fused into a molten mass, which may be used for 
welding rails, shafts, and broken pieces of heavy 
machinery. Pure specimens of such metals as 
chromium, uranium, and manganese, whose oxides 
are otherwise hard to reduce, may be obtained in a 
similar way. 

Aluminum has many other important uses. The pow¬ 
dered metal, mixed with oil, makes a silvery aluminum 
paint; mixed with ammonium nitrate it makes the explosive 
ammonal, which was extensively used in the World War. 
The largest part of the aluminum of commerce is used by 
steel makers; a small amount added to molten steel combines 
with the gases and so gives ingots free from blow holes. 

Aluminum is prepared on a large scale at Niagara Falls 
by electrolysis. This process, first applied in 1886, lowered 
the price from $4 a pound to 18 cents within the lifetime 
of the inventor. The United States produces as much as 
all the rest of the world put together. 

AMAZON RIVER. ‘‘Water! Send us drinking 
water!” was the despairing signal which a becalmed 
sailing vessel once made to a passing steamer, some 
50 miles off the northeastern coast of South America. 
“Dip it up from the ocean; it is all about you,” was 
the strange but true message signalled back. So 
vast is the volume of fresh water discharged by the 
mighty Amazon River that it is noticeable—and 
even drinkable, if we 
may believe the 
stories — 100 miles 
from shore. 

The Amazon, in¬ 
deed, is not so much 
a river as a gigantic 
water reservoir, ex¬ 
tending in the rainy 
season from the sea 
to the base of the 
Andes, and varying 
in width from 5 to 
400 miles. It is thus 
the largest river on 
the globe, and if it is 
not the longest also 
it is still very long. 

The Maranon, as its 
upper course is 
known, rises in the 
Andes of Peru, within 
60 miles of the 
Pacific Ocean. The mouths of the Amazon empty 
into the Atlantic, just at the Equator. Its extreme 
length from source to mouth is about 4,000 miles. 


The width of the main stream at its mouth is 
60 miles, and the tides travel up it 400 miles. Two 
thousand miles from the sea it still has a width of 
more than a mile, and the depth for 750 miles is 
nowhere less than 175 feet. 

The Amazon with its branches is navigable for 
small steamboats for 16,000 miles. Over 200 branches 
and lesser tributaries form the main trunk, one of 
the tributaries from the south being named Rio 
Teodoro (Theodore River), in honor of President 
Roosevelt who explored it. The drainage area 
includes about one-third of South America. There 
is scarcely a perceptible fall in the river from the 
Andes to the mouth, and there is good reason for 
thinking that the whole region was once a vast gulf, 
now filled by the rising of the land and the silt 
carried down by the river’s current. 

A Vast Green Wilderness 

The greater part of this great basin is a “sea of 
verdure,” extending as a traveler says “in an un¬ 
broken evergreen circle of 1,100 miles’ diameter.” 
The extensive forests are truly tropical, being so dark 
and thick, so twisted and matted and interlaced 
with trees, vines, and shrubs, as to present an almost 
impassable barrier. There are probably not 25 square 
miles cleared and under cultivation, except in the 
almost inaccessible mountain regions of its source. 
A few hundred thousand scattered Indians, engaged 
in hunting, raising cacao, and collecting rubber and 
Brazil nuts, make up the greater part of the popu¬ 
lation of an area equal to five-sixths of the whole 
United States. 

In all this vast area there is scarcely a mile of 
railroad and practically no roads. Travel is entirely 

by water, and very 
largely in the long 
black native canoes, 
which the Indians 
pole up stream in the 
shallow water at the 
river’s edge or 
through the innu¬ 
merable bayous and 
swampy channels 
which parallel and 
intersect the main 
stream. On the 
banks of reddish clay 
we see broad-leafed 
magnolias, trees with 
thin needle-like foli¬ 
age, and live oaks and 
water oaks whose 
trailing silvery moss 
drags in the river’s 
current. In sheltered 
coves and lagoons 
grow innumerable pond lilies, one species of which 
has leaves turned up all around the edge and 
measuring three to five feet across. The air is 


THE GREAT BASIN OF THE AMAZON 



The immense basin of the Amazon and its tributaries is nearly as large as 
all the United States, as the circles in the right-hand corner of the illustration 
show. This rich and fertile region, embracing northern Brazil and parts of 
Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, is one of the largest undeveloped 
areas remaining on the globe. 


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AMAZON 


AMBER 



laden with the perfume of a small yellow flower 
called the jasmine, which is poisonous to the touch; 
and everywhere clambers the cypress vine with 
its dainty slender leaves and starlike blossoms. 

Alligators, Monkeys, and Birds 

On sunlit slopes along the banks 
great lazy alligators sleep; and 
at the slightest unusual sound 
hundreds of timid forest creatures 
scamper noisily away through 
the dense undergrowth. The mon¬ 
keys are endless in number— 
small, gray, long-tailed creatures 
who chatter angrily in the tree- 
tops, seemingly unafraid, but who 
disappear as if by magic at the 
first attempt to capture them. 

Birds are few, and these of bril¬ 
liant colors, but harsh and repel¬ 
lent voices. 

Here and there are the few 
little villages, built of mud and 
logs in clearings on the steep 
banks, or on piles driven into the 
river’s bed. Even the plantation 
owners usually build their houses 
in this manner over the river, as 
a means of escaping the dreadful 
insects and mosquitoes which 
swarm in the forest. One scarcely 
ever sees a domestic cat or dog, 
and horses and cows are prac¬ 
tically unknown. (See Brazil.) 

Amazons. Of all the mighty 
hosts described as fighting in the 
siege of Troy, the Amazons were 
the strangest. They were a myth¬ 
ical nation of female warriors, 
ruled alike in peace and war 
entirely by women. It was said 
that their country bordered on 
the Black Sea, and that no man 
might dwell therein. Even the 
boy babies were sent to their fathers, who dwelt 
outside the borders. The girl babies were kept 
and brought up by their mothers, and trained to 
agriculture, hunting, and the art of war. The arms 
of the Amazons were the bow, spear, ax, and a shield 
shaped like a crescent. Usually they fought on horse¬ 
back and they were most formidable warriors. Greek 
legends tell of adventures of Hercules and Theseus 
in the land of the Amazons; and it was said that 
Achilles slew their queen in a fierce battle under the 
walls of Troy. Many Greek works of art portrayed 
these female warriors, along with the centaurs. 

In out-of-the-way places on the globe geographers 
have found strange peoples among whom the rights 
of the mother are stronger than the rights of the father, 
and where women have an importance and perform 
many duties which elsewhere belong to men. It is 


thought that the Greek stories of the Amazons arose 
from such travelers’ tales. 

History records many instances of women war¬ 
riors. In modern times the King of Dahomey, in 
western Africa, had an army of 
women; and in the Russian Revo¬ 
lution of 1917 there was a women’s 
“Battalion of Death,” vowed to 
fight to the last breath in defense 
of Russia. The Amazon River, 
in South America, received its 
name from the fact that one of 
the earlier explorers was there 
attacked by a tribe of savages, 
among whom the women fought 
alongside the men. 

Amber. Countless ages ago 
clear pitch or resin exuded from 
pine trees, and accumulations of 
it were covered up by various 
layers of soil. In the course of 
time these buried resins became 
hardened and changed somewhat 
in substance, becoming amber. 

Amber is a brittle yellow trans¬ 
lucent substance, hard enough to 
be cut into beads and ornaments, 
but not hard as compared with 
marble or glass. The ancient 
Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans 
valued amber highly, and attrib¬ 
uted mysterious powers to it, 
because it becomes electrified 
when it is rubbed and attracts 
light bodies. The Greeks called 
it elektron, from which we get 
our word electricity. Occasion¬ 
ally insects of species now extinct 
are found entombed in the lumps. 

The variety of pine which pro¬ 
duced amber grew chiefly on the 
site now occupied by the Baltic 
Sea and the North Sea. This 
part of the earth’s crust gradually became submerged. 
When these waters are disturbed by violent storms, 
pieces of amber are frequently washed out and cast 
up on the neighboring shores. The ancients got all 
their amber by picking up these fragments, but today 
most of it is obtained by mining. 

Amber is usually found in small pieces, but some 
lumps weighing up to 15 and 18 pounds have been 
found. Small quantities are found in Great Britain, 
Sicily, Siberia, Greenland, and the United States, but 
the chief source is along the shores of the Baltic, 
especially in East Prussia. 

Amber is used chiefly for the mouthpieces of pipes, 
and for ornaments. In recent years its place has 
largely been taken in these uses by an artificial 
product of carbolic acid and formaldehyde called 
“bakelite” (see Celluloid). 



Here, much enlarged, is one of the ancient 
insects found in amber. It is related to the 
Hessian flies of today that get into the farmer’s 
wheat. You can even see the impression of 
its two delicate wings. 



This is an amber-entombed ant of those distant 
days when amber was still soft pitch. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

106 









LITTLE, TALKS 
ON GREAT THINGS 

Jyy^Trtl) urJ'Tec, 


AMBITION 


E ARE living at a time when to 
be young is the proudest thing in 
the world. There is hardly a suc¬ 
cessful man living who would not 
give his success for the years that he before 
you. A famous man once said he would 
give all he ever had to be alive in 50 years. 

The world will be a fine place to live in 
when you grow up. What are you going to 
do in it? Are you going to muddle through 
somehow until the dark gates open that lead 
into another life, or are you going to make 
yourself known and felt and become a power 
for good? You live in a small town, per¬ 
haps, and have not seen much of the great 
world beyond; but every avenue that leads 
to fame in this great country begins at the 
door of your school. You may walk out of 
your school and be president of the United 
States, or the mistress of the White House. 

The Prizes are for Those who Seek Them 

Nothing can keep you back if you mean 
to go forward. The roads that lead to suc¬ 
cess are widening more and more. You may 
wander in a hundred fields and pick your 
prize. 

As you sit reading this, thinking perhaps 
of all the difficulties you have and thinking 
that there can never be anything but a 
struggling life before you, you may feel that 
this is all very well for others, but that some¬ 
how it is not true for you. 

If you think like that you may make up 
your mind at once that it is not true for you, 
for none of us can get any farther than we 
look. We must make up our minds where 
we are going. Remember that it is not the 
way you go that matters most, but how far 
you go that way; whether, when you have 
chosen your way, you acquit yourselves like 
men. Remember that all useful work is 
honorable, and that the only dishonor in it 
is if it is badly done. And the task that is 
set before everyone is, not to be this, or that, 
or the other—to mind a machine, to drive a 
plow, to write a book, to paint a picture, or 
go to Congress; the great task set before us 
is so to prepare in the days of our youth that 
in carrying on our work in the world we shall 
do things well. 

What, then, are the qualities we need 



most on our way through the world? There 
are not many things that all men agree on, 
but some things there are that everyone 
knows to be true; and, perhaps, the first of 
these things is that to do anything worth 
doing we must have a definite purpose. We 
must have an aim in life. We must make up 
our mind what we want to do, how we want 
to do it, and must let nothing come in our 
way. 

We must believe in ourselves and in the 
purpose we set before us. Do not believe 
those who would tell you there is anything 
wrong in the desire to get on. There is a 
right getting-on and a wrong getting-on, and 
when we say that we want to get on, I hope 
we always mean not merely that we want 
more money in our pocket but that we want 
to know more as well as to have more; that we 
want more opportunities of well-doing and 
well-being. There are low ambitions and 
high ambitions. Let us see that we aim at 
a high purpose. In Emerson’s splendid 
words, let us “hitch our wagon to a star.” 

You are right to be ambitious to succeed; 
you are right to seize every opportunity that 
will help you on the road to prosperity. A 
country is rightly proud of its prosperous 
citizens and we owe it to our country to 
build up its material and moral greatness. 

There are two classes of people in every 
country—those who keep its honor bright 
and those who spoil its name. You may 
belong to either. It does not matter who 
you are, whether you are rich or poor. 

Sure Recipes for Failure and Success 
If you want to fail in your life, to dis¬ 
appoint yourself and those who love you, to 
give your country nothing back for all it has 
given to you, you need not greatly trouble. 
Thousands of men in poorhouses and prisons 
can give you a recipe for failure. Here is such 
a recipe: 

A careless school life. Wasted evenings. 
Bad reading. An insatiable desire for sport 
or amusement. Living from 15 to 20 with¬ 
out a definite idea of what you are going to 
do with your life. 

That is a recipe for a useless life which has 
never been known to fail. If you want to 
succeed in your life, to make your father and 



I 






















































mother proud, to have your comrades proud in 
years to come that they were at school with you, 
to make your country’s reputation higher still 
throughout the world, you can make your 
success sure now. Thousands of men in high 
positions can give you a recipe for success. Here 
is one: 

A well-spent youth. Healthy amusements. 
Evenings of recreation and study. Good reading 
and companions. A definite idea of what you 
mean to be, and a belief that you will be what 
you make yourself. 

You cannot have all the books you want; you 
cannot stay at school, perhaps, as long as you 
should. But you can have knowledge, the most 
interesting and powerful thing in the world; and 
with knowledge hardly anything is impossible to 
a boy who means to get on. Nothing is so win¬ 
ning as knowledge and enthusiasm hand in hand. 
“As you think, so you are,” says the man of 
science. As you are in boyhood, so will your 
manhood be. 

Why, then, if our success depends upon our¬ 
selves, do so many fail? Well, there are many 
kinds of failures. A few—very few—fail through 
circumstances beyond their control; some fail 
through lack of concentration, through being 
unable to fit themselves to circumstances, or to 
look forward; others fail through sluggishness, in¬ 
difference, or bad character. But in nearly all 
cases failure may be traced to one thing—to boys 
or girls shutting their eyes to their opportunities. 

Make Up Your Mind, Then Go Ahead 
You can be what you make up your mind to 
be, if you make up your mind that it depends 
on you. Be resolved and determined to reach 
your end. 

We must be resolute; we must have determi¬ 
nation; we must concentrate on realizing the 
height of our ambition in all we undertake. It 
is no use our having ideas unless we mean to 
carry them out. It would take a week to tell 
you of half the things that men have said to be 
impossible which have been done by men of 
determination. Men said it was impossible to 
have railways, and the man who first tried to 
make a steamship was driven to despair by people 
who looked upon him as a man out of his mind. 
Even Sir Walter Scott said that a man was an 
idiot to talk of lighting London by gas. The 
men who gave us the inventions which make 


millions happy and wealthy today were often 
ridiculed and driven to starvation, and we owe 
the pleasures we get from their inventions simply 
to their unwearying ambition and the determina¬ 
tion which never gave way. Stick to your work 
and pursue it. Do not give yourself so many 
things to do that you can do none of them well. 
You are only wasting your time if you fritter it 
away in little things that amount to nothing. 

The boy who sticks to his work—that is the 
boy the world is waiting for. That is the boy 
for whom somebody has 110,000 a year. That 
is the boy who will paint the picture that every¬ 
body will go to see. That is the boy who will 
be manager of a big store. That is the boy that 
every mother wishes her son to be. 

Be Proud of Your Country 

You are growing up in the greatest country in 
the world. There are many things to put right— 
sad things and bad things that will cry aloud to 
you when you grow up. But that must always be, 
until the end of the world, and what I hope 
you are growing up to feel about your country is 
that it is the best of all countries that have ever 
been. You belong to the freest nation that has 
ever been known, and you are growing up to take 
your place in it. You will have to help to rule 
it. You speak a language which is covering the 
earth; you will grow to know how rich is the 
opportunity and how great is the glory of being 
born in a free land. 

And it is for you—you who will rule America 
in a not far-off tomorrow—to keep its name un¬ 
tarnished. Be proud of your country, which 
has given you more than you can ever pay back. 

Be bold and courageous. Do not be afraid if 
you make a mistake. One of the most success¬ 
ful men in the world once said to me: “Never be 
afraid of mistakes. I have made many of them, 
and am going to make more.” It is perfectly 
true that the man who never made a mistake 
never made anything. Do right because it is 
right, and be bold in doing it. 

Be in all things honorable; be capable in what 
you undertake; be afraid of nothing but evil; be 
anxious for nothing but good. So you will serve 
your country well; so you will honor God; so you 
will travel to your destiny with peace and love 
for your companions, by a way which no cloud 
can darken, with a calm which none of this 
world’s sorrows can destroy. 


For any subject no found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

108 








The Great New World 



AMERICA 


America. For thousands of years before Columbus 
accidentally stumbled upon the New World, this 
great land mass lay to the west of Europe and Africa, 
unsuspected and unknown. True, there had been 
vague rumors that 
land existed to 
west. The legends of 
the lost Atlantis, of a 
mysterious 
land called 
Brazil, and of 
the Isle of St. 

Brandon, all 
probably grew 
out of some 
knowledge of 
this land. 

Moreover, 
some five hun¬ 
dred years be¬ 
fore the time of 
Columbus, Leif 
Ericson and his 
hardy vikings 
of the North 
had actually 
visited the 
northeastern 
coasts of North 
America. But 
the Northmen 
had failed to 
follow up their 
discoveries, and 
not until centuries later did the story of their dis¬ 
covery of “ Vinland” become generally known through 
studies of the old Norse sagas. 

Even Columbus little realized that he had dis¬ 
covered a new world; when he died, the people of 
Europe still popularly believed that he had reached 
the islands off the coast of Asia, and for a long time 
it was by the name of “Indies” that Spanish docu¬ 
ments referred to the land to the west. 

This ignorance of Columbus is not surprising 
since he touched only a few places in the New World. 
The West Indies, the Bahamas, the coast of South 
America at the mouth of the Orinoco, and the coast 
of Central America were all that he opened up before 
the eyes of Europeans. From his brief visit to the 
mainland he gained no idea of the size of the land 
mass nor of its continuity, and North America was 
not even touched by him. 

Gradually, however, bit by bit, the two continents 
emerged as from a mist before the world’s astonished 
eyes. The English explorer Cabot and the Portu¬ 
guese Corte-Real sailed along the coasts of New¬ 
foundland and Labrador. Verrazano, sailing for the 
French, started at Newfoundland and went as far 
south as North Carolina. Ponce de Leon made 
known the peninsula of Florida; Pinzon and Cabral 



In front of the Pan American building at Wash¬ 
ington stand two noble groups of statuary, one 
representing North America, the other South 
America. North America, by G Utzon Borglum, 
is shown with the torch of civilization in her 
right hand, and beneath are the emblems of 
Art and Industry. 


visited the coast of Brazil; and Juan Diaz de Solis 
pushed southward to the banks of the Plata River. 
Meanwhile a letter by Americus Vespucius, describ¬ 
ing voyages which he had made to the northeastern 
coast of South America, led to the giving his name 
by mistake to the whole New World (see Vespucius, 
Americus). 



AMERICA 


Three Hundred Years of Discovery 

Still, Europeans had no true idea of the extent of 
America. This knowledge was gained by the con¬ 
quests of Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru; by 
the explorations of De Soto and Coronado in southern 
and southwestern United States; and by the voyage 
of Magellan to the extremity of South America, 
through the straits that bear his name, and on to the 
Indies. The Englishman Drake continued the ex¬ 
ploration of the western coast as far north as northern 
California; Bering and Vancouver completed the task 
by exploring the northwestern shores. Only after 
three centuries (1792) was the entire Atlantic and 
Pacific coast line of America made known. 

In the meantime finding that America was not the 
opulent East, and that it was thrown like a barrier 
across the western way to the real Indies, men began 
the search for a passage through it. The idea that 
there was such a passage became almost a certainty 
when Balboa, in 1513, crossed the Isthmus of Panama 
and found that the two 
oceans were separated 
from each other by a 
mere neck of land only 
50 miles in width. As 
the Spaniards and Por¬ 
tuguese held all from 
the Gulf of Mexico 
southward, the French 
and the English turned 
their attention to 
the Northwest. 

Jacques Cartier 
thought he had 
found this North¬ 
west Passage when 
he sailed into the 
Gulf of St. Law¬ 
rence in 1534; 
but when Cap¬ 
tain John 
Smith land¬ 
ed at James- 
to wn in 
1607 the 

passage was This is the companion group to that of North 
x*ll nnr i- America, described above, and is by Isidore Konti. 
StlU UI1U1&- -j-jjg p an American building was erected in further- 
Covered. ance °* c l° ser relations between the United States 
* and her sister republics, from a fund supplied by 
Because any the joint contribution of Andrew Carnegie and the 
_• T „_ Uf twenty-one American nations, including the United 
river migiili States, which form the Pan American Union, 
prove to be 

the longed-for route, Smith explored not only the 
Chesapeake, but all of the streams which flow into it. 


contained in the Eaty Reference Fact-index at the end of this work 

109 










[ 


AMERICA 



Opening Up the New World 


MAP SHOWING ROUTES OF EXPLORERS 



We say that Columbus “discovered” America in 1492; but, as a matter of fact, it took 300 years to discover merely the outline—the shape 
—of the Americas, and it took a great many bold navigators to do it. Indeed, as you can see by McClure’s route, away up there in the 
icy seas of the North, it was not until the beginning of the latter half of the 19th century that the work was finally completed by the dis¬ 
covery of the famous Northwest Passage, which so many explorers had vainly struggled to find. First of all came Columbus in 1492; then 
his second voyage in 1493, and his third and last in 1498. Meanwhile, in 1497, John Cabot, sailing on behalf of England, was the first 
(except the Norsemen, whose names are not included among the explorers because we know next to nothing of the route they took or where 

they landed) to touch the continent of North America. 


Henry Hudson was convinced that he had found the 
passage when he sailed up the river which bears his 
name, and when he was disillusioned he tried farther 
north at Hudson Bay. Not until 1850-53 did the 
British Arctic explorer Sir Robert McClure succeed 
in making his way from one ocean to the other by 
the Northwest Passage, and demonstrate the impos¬ 
sibility of commerce by this icy route. 

The result of these patient explorations was the 


emergence of a New World utterly unlike anything 
which Europeans had known before. Even in 
physical appearance it differed greatly from Europe. 
There the highlands are in the center of the land mass, 
with wide plains sloping towards the northern and 
western oceans. In both continents of the New 
World a lofty rugged mountain mass runs like a back¬ 
bone through the western part, forming the Andes in 
South America and the Rockies in the northern 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

110 














AMERICAN LITERATURE 


The Natives Named “Indians” 

continent. Near the eastern coast of each continent 
there lies an older and less rugged mountain system— 
the Brazilian and Appalachian, respectively; and 
between the eastern and western highlands are vast 
central plains, through which flow mighty rivers. 

It was the inhabitants of the New World, how¬ 
ever, who most amazed the early explorers. Here 
they found a copper-colored race whom they called 
“Indians,” but who proved quite unlike the natives 
of the real Indies in Asia. These Indians lived for 
the most part in tribes and their civilization was of 
various stages. There were the wandering tribes of 
the north, who lived by hunting and fishing and whose 
weapons were made of stone. Farther south were the 
cliff dwellers and the pueblo Indians. In Mexico and 
Peru the Aztecs and Incas had developed permanent 
dwellings grouped in cities, with many improvements 
in the way of irrigation and water supply. But even 
these people were far behind the civilizations of Europe 
and Asia. The American redmen had been separated 
by distances and impassable seas from the ancient 
seats of civilization—Egypt and Babylonia, Greece 
and Rome, India and China—from which had come 
the art and culture of the Old World. The New 
World, too, was seriously handicapped in developing 
a civilization of its own by the lack of any large 


animals capable of domestication. The ox, the horse, 
and the ass were all lacking in the Western Hemi¬ 
sphere; the buffalo was incapable of taming by man, 
and the llama, the largest animal which could be 
domesticated and trained to bear burdens, was too 
weak and too slow to be of much value either in 
peace or war. 

So because of their inferior culture, the aborigines 
of America were conquered and crowded out by 
European settlers. In time the whole of the two 
continents came under the sway of Old World 
nations. England eventually held the greater portion 
of North America, while Spain possessed Mexico, 
Central America, and all of South America except 
Brazil, which was in the hands of Portugal. But 
beginning in 1776, with the revolt of the Thirteen 
Colonies which founded the United States, the colonies 
began to break away from the Old World dominion. 
Today practically the only possessions held by 
European nations in either of the two continents are 
the Guianas on the northern coast of South America 
(divided between Great Britain, France, and Hol¬ 
land), and the Dominion of Canada; and the latter, 
although a part of the British Empire, is virtually 
self-governing. (See also Central America; North 
America; South America.) 


AMERICAN AUTHORS and What They 


A merican litera¬ 
ture. Writers of 
literary history remind 
us that America’s litera¬ 
ture is only an offshoot 
of English literature. 
That is true, for it is 
written in the English 
language and is rooted in 
the religion, folklore, and 
literature that is the com¬ 
mon heritage of both 
countries. But it is also 


“ TJ/ r HO reads an American book?” scoffingly asked 
'' Sydney Smith, an English wit, early in the 19th 
century. Today we could answer that everyone who cares 
about good reading knows about the works of Poe, Whit¬ 
man, Henry James, Mark Twain, and a host of other 
American writers. But when the question was asked, 
literary America had no such famous names to offer. That 
same quarter of a century, however, brought to light the 
first great American authors. And since then, on through 
the golden time of Longfellow, Emerson, and Hawthorne, 
and the after-years with their multiplying novels, short 
stories, and verse, the number has steadily increased. 
This article will give you a glimpse of the pageant of 
American literature and its makers. 


true that American 

literature is a branch transplanted to a new soil and 
developing under new influences, so that it has come 
to have character distinctly its own. 

The Beginnings in Colonial Days 

To understand American literature one needs to go 
back of the years when it had its first distinctive 
beginnings, to colonial times. Naturally, neither 
Virginian adventurers nor New England Puritans 
wrote much—they were too busy clearing the forests, 
planting the soil, and fighting Indians. But they 
did keep records and write letters and pamphlets 
home to England, and the New Englanders developed 
a rather extensive religious literature. 

The first colonial writer was that dashing soldier 
Captain John Smith, whose romantic ‘True Relation 
of Virginia’ was printed in England in 1608. In 


Wrote 

serious-minded New 
England, two governors 
who kept valuable his¬ 
torical records, “in a 
plain style and with sin¬ 
gular regard to the sim¬ 
ple truth in all things,” 
were William Bradford 
and John Winthrop. 
The poetry consisted 
mainly of hymns and the 
Psalms done into queer 
rhyme. The ‘ Bay Psalm- 
Book’ (1640) , printed on 
the new printing press set up at Cambridge, Mass., 
was the first book in English printed in America; in 
Mexico, however, the Spaniards had established print¬ 
ing many years before this. Another curious book was 
the ‘New England Primer’, whose ABC ends thus: 

Z. Zaccheus he 

Did climb a tree 
Our Lord to see. 

Two famous preacher-writers were Cotton Mather 
(died 1728), who wrote extensively on theology, 
New England history, and witchcraft, and Jonathan 
Edwards (died 1758), author of‘The Freedom of the 
Will’. A little later, Poor Richard’s Almanac, pub¬ 
lished annually for 25 years by practical Benjamin 
Franklin, reached with its wise sayings into every 
home, and helped to develop industry and thrift. 


the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 
111 


contained in 







AMERICAN LITERATURE 


The Amazing Genius of Poe 


Before, during, and just after the Revolution, any 
American who had a gift for writing put it to hasty 
but practical use. Pamphlets and speeches abounded, 
all filled with a growing spirit of citizenship and 
patriotism. John Adams, Patrick Henry, Richard 
Henry Lee, James Otis, Samuel Adams, 
and Josiah Quincy were stirring speakers, 
contributors to newspapers, and pam¬ 
phlet writers. Thomas Jefferson drew 
up the ‘Declaration of Independence’, 
carried on a voluminous correspondence, 
and wrote many admirable state papers. 

Thomas Paine, who came from England 
in 1774, in his ‘Common Sense’ and 
‘The Crisis’, fearlessly and in trenchant 
phrase set forth the true meaning of the 
struggle with the mother country. Alex¬ 
ander Hamilton, with John Jay and 
James Madison, wrote ‘ The Federalist ’— 
a series of essays which formed the ablest 
defense and clearest exposition of the new Federal 
Constitution. Washington, with the aid of Hamilton, 
Madison, and other advisers, wrote his immortal 
‘ Farewell Address ’. All these men belong to history 
rather than to literature. Two autobiographies, how¬ 
ever, have a place in literature. One is the diary 
of good John Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker; and the 
other, of far wider fame, is Franklin’s ‘Autobiography’, 
which unquestionably ranks among the few great 
autobiographies ever written. 

First Poetry and Fiction 

Though the Revolutionary times were as unfavor¬ 
able as possible for the beginning of anything like 
good poetry or fiction, nevertheless Philip Freneau 
composed, besides political satires, pieces like ‘The 
Indian Burying Ground’ that mark him as America’s 
first true poet; and Charles 
Brockden Brown, the first 
novelist, wrote his ‘Wie- 
land’ (1798) and other 
“ tales of terror. ” In this 
connection may also be 
mentioned John Trum¬ 
bull’s‘McFingal’, a satire 
on the American Loyalists 
or Tories, in which occur 
the lines: 

No man e’er felt the halter draw 
With good opinion of the law. 

Once the wars with Great 
Britain were over, the 
country could turn with renewed attention to develop¬ 
ing its resources and developing a distinctly national 
civilization. The new settlers had built their house 
and settled their quarrels with their neighbors, and 
now they could, as it were, sit down and enjoy what 
they had, and plan how to make the new house bigger 
and more beautiful. The years from 1815 to 1837 
have been called an “era of good feeling.” The 
Mississippi valley was being settled, the nearer West 

For any subject not found in its 


was opening up, and Americans felt a new dignity as 
a nation. Authors found both leisure and stimulus 
to write for the sake of writing. Presently four really 
great writers appeared whose work had a distinctly 
national flavor and won instant fame abroad. 

Washington Irving, “father of Ameri¬ 
can literature,” was the first, with his 
humorous ‘Knickerbocker’s History of 
New York’ (1809) and his ‘ Sketch-Book ’ 
delightful in description and story, and 
skilful in his use of history and legend. 
Then came James Fenimore Cooper, who 
set up a broad New World stage of 
forest, plain, and sea for such thrilling 
novels as ‘The Spy’ (1821) and ‘The 
Pilot’, and created a new sort of American 
romance in ‘ The Last of the Mohicans ’ 
and others of his ‘Leatherstocking Tales’. 

The breadth and sweep of nature in 
the New World inspired also America’s 
first great poet, William Cullen Bryant, whose 
‘Thanatopsis’ appeared in 1817, and through whose 
verses flow— 

.... feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, 

Like currents journeying through the boundless deep. 
Not much later appeared the work of Edgar Allan 
Poe, whom the French have called America’s greatest 
genius—clever detective tales, thrilling mysteries, 
vivid horror tales, symbolic stories, all written with 
the beauty and wonderful word-music that his poetry 
possesses, whether it be the somber ‘Raven’, or 
‘ Ulalume ’, or ‘ The Bells’ that— 

.... tinkle, tinkle, tinkle 
In the icy air of night, 

While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight. 

Alongside Bryant and 
Poe other poets of the time 
seem insignificant. But 
Joseph Rodman Drake’s 
‘American Flag’, Fitz- 
Greene Halleck’s ‘Marco 
Bozzaris ’, and John How¬ 
ard Payne’s ‘ Home, Sweet 
Home ’ are still remem¬ 
bered. Another name once 
famous but now almost 
forgotten is that of 
Nathaniel Willis, a graceful 
American poet and prose 
writer. 

From the War of 1812 to the Civil War, great 
national questions demanded discussion and settle¬ 
ment—states’ • rights, the tariff, internal improve¬ 
ments, what to do with new territories, the growing 
puzzle of slavery. This was the time of America’s 
great orators: Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel 
Webster, Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett. As the 
century grew older, the country opened out into a 
vast territory full of new opportunities. A bigger 

alphabetical place see information 



IRVING 

Father of American Prose 



BRYANT 
Poet of Nature 



POE 

Wizard of Word Music 


112 













| New England Philosophers 



national consciousness had developed, and time had 
given America a richer background of thought and 
experience. Over in Europe, also, many great changes 
and thought-movements were in progress, and there 
were many new thinkers and writers. 

Golden Age of American Literature 
All these influences were reflected in New World 
literature, and about 1840 began its great creative 
period—that of the poets, 
essayists, and other writers 
who made the middle 19th 
century America’s golden 
age of literature. Natur¬ 
ally enough it was New 
England, at that time 
America’s foremost center 
of culture, that produced 
almost all of them. 

These were men of fresh 
alert minds. They were 
artists whose words could 
Emerson paint pictures or make 

Inspirer of Thought mus ic. and they were ^ 

men who desired to use their knowledge and art 
to awaken Americans to thought on religion and 
philosophy, or on national and social questions like 
slavery, and to give them a wider 
knowledge of books and men. 

The question of religion was again 
stirring New England. The church that 
the Pilgrim Fathers had founded for 
freedom of worship had become hard 
and narrow, and many were breaking 
away from it. This contributed to the 
change of religious views manifested in 
the Unitarian movement, and to the fur¬ 
ther broadening of thought that was 
called Transcendentalism. It would be 
hard to explain briefly the views of the 
transcendentalists, and some of their 
experiments, like the Brook Farm com¬ 
munity life, were not very successful. But their aims 
were high, and the movement strongly influenced not 
only those directly con¬ 
nected with it but many 
other American writers and 
thinkers of that time. 

The loftiest soul in this 
group was Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, philosopher and 
poet, who did more than 
any other American writer 
of his time to make people 
think. Associated with him 
in life and ideas was Henry 
David Thoreau, a poet and 
the first of our nature 
essayists. At Cambridge, 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put his literary knowl¬ 
edge and his gift for making simple melodious verse 


into writing the poetry that has made him the best 
loved of all American poets. Every school child 
knows ‘Evangeline’, and ‘The Courtship of Miles 
Standish’, or at least has followed where— 

Forth into the forest straightway 
All alone walked Hiawatha 
Proudly with his hows and arrows; 

And the birds sang around him, o’er him, 

‘Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!’ 

John Greenleaf Whittier 
wrote his calm Quaker 
hymns and his stirring war 
poems, and pictured the 
simple life on a New Eng¬ 
land farm, where he him¬ 
self had been a “barefoot 
boy with cheek of tan.” 

The busy charming phy¬ 
sician Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, in his delightful 
‘Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table’, showed American 
readers the value of cul¬ 
ture and entertained them 
with wise thought and clever fun. James Russell 
Lowell, author of ‘The Vision of Sir Launfal’, 
‘Biglow Papers’, ‘The Crisis’, and a host of other 
poems, was another ardent antislavery 
poet; he was a great critic, too, and 
his essays on books and reading have 
helped many to choose well their read¬ 
ing and to appreciate to the full its 
beauties. He has left the world many 
“immortal phrases” such as “Truth for¬ 
ever on the scaffold, Wrong forever 
on the throne”; “Who speaks truth 
stabs falsehood to the heart”; “New 
occasions teach new duties; Time makes 
ancient good uncouth; They must up¬ 
ward still and onward, Who would keep 
abreast of Truth. ” 

A very different sort of poet was Walt 
Whitman, the child of the New York metropolis. 
He wrote with entire freedom from the usual rhyme 
and rhythm, and with 
equal freedom of thought. 

His noblest poem is his 
tribute to Lincoln, ‘My 
Captain’, written after the 
martyred President’s as¬ 
sassination. In the South, 
the greatest poet next to 
Poe was Sidney Lanier. 

His poems are filled with 
the love of nature. 

Among lesser names, 
that of Bayard Taylor—■ 
essayist and poet—stands 
high. In addition to Poe 
and Lanier, the South had also, among others, the 
poets Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886) and Henry 




LONGFELLOW 
Laureate of Song 



HOLMES 
Witty Essayist and Poet 



WHITTIER 
The Quaker Poet 



contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

113 











AMERICAN LITERATURE 


J | Harte Tells the Story of the “West’ , ~| 


Timrod (1829-1867). The latter’s ‘Spring’ expresses 
well the spirit of these poets: 

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air 
Which dwells in all things fair, 

Spring, with her golden suns and silver rains, 

Is with us once again. 

In the deep heart of every forest tree 
The blood is all aglee, 

And there’s a look about the leafless 
bowers 

As if they dreamed of flowers. 

Out of the Civil War time remain also 
a few memorable songs like ‘ The Battle 
Hymn of the Republic’, by Julia Ward 
Howe, and ‘Maryland, My Maryland’, 
by James Randall; and a few poems such 
as ‘ Sheridan’s Ride ’, by T. B. Read, and 
F. M. Finch’s ‘ The Blue and The Gray ’. 

Good novels were slow to appear in 
America because of the lack of legend and 
tradition that novelists often use. But 
the time of the great poets and essay¬ 
ists brought also to fruition the genius 
of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose exquisite 
style and deep penetration into human motives make 
him perhaps America’s greatest novelist. Born and 
bred in old Salem, he 
put into his romances, 
‘ TheScarletLetter’and' The 
House of the Seven Gables’, 
an atmosphere that was 
Puritan N ew England itself. 

The real day of the novel 
did not come until after 
the war, but a good many 
stories were written before 
that. William Gilmore 
Simms and Herman Mel¬ 
ville wrote adventure sto¬ 
ries after the fashion of 
Cooper. A few others were 
John Esten Cooke, another son of the South; Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, whose ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin ’ did more 
to banish slavery than all the learned 
sermons and orations; Edward Everett 
Hale’s stirring patriotic sketch, ‘ The Man 
Without a Country’, falls in the midst 
of the Civil War struggle. 

Not all the good and interesting writing 
has been done by poets and story-tellers. 

Historians, also, who have known their 
facts and could write picturesquely about 
them, deserve a place in our account. 

Of these William Hickling Prescott, whose 
‘Conquest of Mexico’ and ‘Conquest of 
Peru’ glow with color and life to match 
the exploits of the Spanish conquerors, 
deserves first mention. John Lothrop 
Motley, who wrote ‘ The Rise of the Dutch Republic’ 
and other books, gives us striking pictures of the 
heroic Dutch resistance to Spain. George Bancroft 
spent most of his long life on his 12 great volumes 


devoted to the history of the United States to the 
close of the Revolution and the forming of the Federal 
Constitution. Francis Parkman under conditions of 
ill health similar to those which hampered Prescott 
wrote most charmingly of France and England in 
the New World. We rejoice that the Indian life, as 
he saw it and described it in ‘The Oregon Trail’, 
had so picturesque a chronicler; for, as 
he himself says, “the wild cavalcade 
that defiled before my eyes down the 
gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint 
and war plumes, fluttering trophies and 
savage embroidery, bows and arrows, 
lances and shields, will never be seen 
again.” 

If the poets and essayists held the 
center of the stage before the war, the 
novelists and short-story writers have 
had their turn since that event. So 
many good, even if not very great, novels 
have been written as to make difficult 
the task of selection. The writers, too, 
are no longer centered in New England and the East; 
they have sprung up all over the country—West, 
Middle West, and South 
as well. 

Many of these novels 
picture life peculiar to the 
various separate localities 
of America. The West has 
been a favorite field from 
the time when Bret Harte, 
writing of the stirring law¬ 
less life of the California 
mining camps, started this 
new fashion in American 
fiction, the short story of 
“ local color. ” Mary Hal- 
lock Foote, Helen Hunt 
Jackson, Owen Wister, and Alice French have all 
written of the West. New England types and places 
have been represented in the novels of 
William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins 
Freeman, Alice Brown, and Edith 
Wharton. New York life has figured in 
the stories of H. C. Bunner, Richard 
Harding Davis, Mrs. Burton Harrison, 
and that famous short-story writer, 
“O. Henry” (Sydney Porter). Edward 
Eggleston with his ‘Hoosier School- 
Master ’, Booth Tarkington, known to all 
boys because of ‘Penrod’, and Hamlin 
Garland belong to the Middle States. 
The best tales of southern life are George 
W. Cable’s ‘ Old Creole Days ’ and other 
books. War and reconstruction, negro 
life, old southern aristocracy, Kentucky and Tennessee 
mountaineers, appear in the books of James Lane 
Allen, John Fox Jr., “Charles Egbert Craddock” (Miss 
Murfree), Thomas Nelson Page, and F. Hopkinson 




HAWTHORNE 
Genius of Romance 



HOWELLS 
Master of Realism 



HARTE 

Interpreter of Western Life 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

114 













j Writers of the 20th Century 


AMERICAN LITERATURE 


Smith. Joel Chandler Harris’ delightful Uncle 
Remus stories are negro tales with the flavor of cabin 
and plantation, and have become classics. 

History offers a fine field for the novel writer, and it 
is not surprising that American authors have found 
inspiration in the past of 
their own country. A few 
of the good historical novels 
are Winston Churchill’s 
Revolutionary and Civil 
War tales, Mary Hartwell 
Catherwood’s romances of 
early French history in the 
New World, Maurice 
Thompson’s ‘Alice of Old 
Vincennes’, S.Weir Mitch¬ 
ell’s ‘Hugh Wynne’, and 
Mary Johnston’s ‘ To Have 
and to Hold’. 

F. Marion Crawford, who 
spent most of his life in Italy, wrote his best novels 
and other books on Italian subjects. Constance 
Fenimore Woolson, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and 
Kate Douglas Wiggin have written good novels and 
short stories, some of them for children. Louisa 
May Alcott’s books for boys and girls keep much of 
their popularity, as does General Lew Wallace’s 
‘Ben Hur’, a tale of the time of Christ. A famous 
woman novelist is Margaret Deland, author of ‘Old 
Chester Tales’ and many other volumes; and one of 
the most original and humorous American writers of 
fiction is Frank R. Stockton. 

The three great outstanding figures in this crowd 
of fiction writers are William Dean Howells, Henry 
James and “Mark Twain.” Howells, who has 
written many kinds of books, is most famous as a writer 
of novels like ‘The Rise of Silas Lapham’, in which he 
draws painstaking pictures *of commonplace people, 
depending for interest on his insight into character 
and skill in writing rather 
than upon events in the 
story. Henry James, too, 
has written psychological 
novels; but he later devel¬ 
oped a subtle and compli¬ 
cated style, and devoted 
himself to the representa¬ 
tion of characters and sit¬ 
uations equally subtle, 
with the result that he is 
best appreciated by the 
minority. ‘Mark Twain’ 
(Samuel L. Clemens) stands 
by himself as a humorist. 
Everybody knows ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Tom 
Sawyer’. But even his humorous books are thought¬ 
ful, and ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ and ‘Joan of 
Arc ’ are fine pieces of serious writing. 

There have been a number of historians also, since 
the Civil War, who have done notable work. Yet 


there are few names that for literary skill could 
be placed alongside those of Motley, Prescott, and 
Parkman. Notable writers, however, were Hubert 
Howe Bancroft, voluminous historian of the Pacific 
states; John Bach McMaster, John Fiske, and James 
Ford Rhodes, all of whom 
wrote graphically of the 
history of the United 
States; Henry Adams, 
known for his ‘History of 
the United States’ (1801- 
1817) and his later ‘ Educa¬ 
tion of Henry Adams’, a 
brilliant autobiographical 
book; Theodore Roosevelt 
and Woodrow Wilson, each 
of whom was a historian of 
rank as well as president. 

Some of the most pleasing 
writing has been done by 
the nature essayists. After Thoreau, John Burroughs 
is supreme, for who combines knowledge, appreciation 
of beauty, and skill and charm in writing in equal 
degree with him? John Muir was another naturalist 
and essayist whose ‘Mountains of California’ and 
other writings are rich in wonderful descriptions. 
Henry van Dyke, more famous for the ‘Blue Flower’, 
‘The Other Wise Man’, and some brilliant poems, 
was at his best when he wrote such outdoor essays as 
‘Fisherman’s Luck’. 

There have been almost as many poets as novel¬ 
ists, and any good collection of magazine verse 
is of necessity a large one. Yet, after all, the later 
poets are not among the very greatest. There were 
Joaquin Miller and Bret Harte, Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich (author of ‘The Man with the Hoe’), Madison 
Cawein, and Edward Rowland Sill. Eugene Field 
made children’s poems that older people like also— 
‘ Wynken, Blynken, and Nod’ and ‘Little Boy Blue’. 
His work was not con¬ 
fined, however, to this 
field, for his humor played, 
now broadly, now with a 
fine delicacy of feeling, 
over a great variety of 
subjects—the free and 
open prairie life, classic 
stories, Bohemian city life 
and homely pleasures. 

James Whitcomb Riley 
wrote children’s poems 
and Hoosier dialect verses 
full of homely philosophy 
and cheer, and became a 
truly national poet. But he was not confined to 
dialect, for many of his best works were written in 
purest English. Lucy Larcom found inspiration in 
such things as a factory girl’s life. Alice and Phoebe 
Cary, Celia Thaxter, and Emily Dickinson all wrote 
verses that touch the heart. Remarkable because he 




FIELD 
Poet of Childhood 



TWAIN 
Prince of Humorists 



tained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

115 










THE AMERICAN SPIRIT AS REVEALED IN LITERATURE 


FAITH IN GOD 

Truth forever on the scaffold, 

Wrong forever on the throne,— 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, 

And behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow 
Keeping watch above His own. 

—James Russell Lowell. 
Our Fathers’ God, to Thee, 

Author of Liberty, 

To Thee we sing; 

Long may our land be bright 
With freedom’s holy light; 

Protect us by Thy might, 

Great God, our King. 

—Samuel F. Smith. 

JOYFUL LIVING AND ENDEAVOR 

Oh! Let us fill our hearts up with the glory of 
the day, 

And banish ev’ry doubt and care and sorrow far 


away 


For the world is full of roses, and the roses full 
of dew, 

And the dew T is full of heavenly love that drips 
for me and you. 

—James Whitcomb Riley. 
The longer on this earth we live 
And weigh the various qualities of men, 

The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty 
Of plain devotedness to duty, 

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, 
But finding amplest recompense 
In life’s ungarlanded expense 
In work done squarely and unwasted days. 

—James Russell Lowell. 
The only life that is worth living is the life of 
effort to attain what is worth striving for. 

—Theodore Roosevelt. 

Be strong! 

We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; 

We have hard work to do and loads to lift; 
Shun not the struggle—face it. ’Tis God’s gift. 

—Maltbie Davenport Babcock. 

LOVE FOR THE OUT-OF-DOORS 

If nature have a word for thee, 

’Tis this, be brave; ’tis this, be strong; 

Let all thy heart be full of cheer, 

And fill the measure of the year 
With thrill of happy song. 

—Margaret Songster. 

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 
Nature’s peace will flow into you 
As sunshine into trees; 

The winds will blow their freshness into you, 
And the storms their energy; 

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves. 

—John Muir. 

The sublime beauty of the Yosemite filled me 
with wonder and awe, but when I heard the 
robin’s note it touched my heart. 

—John Burroughs. 


LOVE OF COUNTRY 

I pledge allegiance to my Flag, 

And to the Republic for which it stands; 
One Nation indivisible, 

With liberty and justice for all. 

— Children's Pledge. 

Let our object be our country, our whole 
country, and nothing but our country. 

—Daniel Webster. 

So it’s home again, and home again, America 
for me, 

My heart is turning home again and there I long 
to be, 

In the land of youth and freedom beyond the 
ocean bars, 

Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is 
full of stars. 

—Henry van Dyke. 

DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM 

1 regret that I have but one life to lose for my 
country.— Nathan Hale. 

“Shoot if you must this old gray head, 

But spare your country’s flag,” she said. 

—John G. Whittier. 

I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
all summer.— General Grant. 

As He died to make men holy, 

Let us die to make men free. 

—Julia Ward Howe. 

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be pur¬ 
chased at the price of chains and slavery? For¬ 
bid it, Almighty God! I know not what course 
others may take, but as for me, give me liberty 
or give me death! — Patrick Henry. 

SONS OF LIBERTY 

And thou, my country, write it on thy heart, 
Thy sons are they who nobly take thy part; 
Who dedicates his manhood at thy shrine, 
Wherever born, is born a son of thine. 

—Henry van Dyke. 
Not gold, but only man can make 
A people great and strong,— 

Men who for truth and honor’s sake 
Stand fast and suffer long. 

Brave men who work while others sleep, 

Who dare while others fly,— 

They build a nation’s pillars deep, 

And lift them to the sky. 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

He serves his country best 
Who lives pure life and doeth righteous deed, 
And walks straight paths, however others stray; 
And leaves his sons an uttermost bequest, 

A stainless record which all men may read: 

This is the better way. 

—Susan Coolidge. 

The greatest gift of God to nations is the gift 
of upright men. — Henry Ward Beecher. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

116 



























The “Free Verse” Writers 


is the greatest negro poet is Paul Laurence Dunbar, 
who wrote some very beautiful poetry, as well as 
amusing or pathetic dialect verse with negro rhythms. 
A few of the others are William Vaughn Moody, Edith 
Thomas, Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, Anna 
Hempstead Branch. The list must end somewhere, 
though somebody’s favorite poet is sure to be left out. 

The novel and the short story flourish still, of 
course, for Americans are tireless story readers. There 
have been novels dealing with later phases and prob¬ 
lems of American life; wild tales of adventure; studies 
of young people. Booth Tarkington, Robert Herrick, 
Robert Grant, William Allen White, Ellen Glasgow, 
Dorothy Canfield, Stewart Edward White, Jack Lon¬ 
don, Theodore Dreiser, Henry Sydnor Harrison, Anne 
Douglas Sedgwick, Zona Gale, Ernest Poole, and 
Joseph Hergesheimer are a few of the 20th century 
names. The World War has brought its own liter¬ 
ature of magazine tales, novels, essays, and travel 
books and accounts of personal experiences. Often 
these have been hurriedly written, and many will no 
doubt be forgotten when the times that made them 
interesting have passed. But the impress left by the 
great world cataclysm on American literature will 
not soon be effaced. 

The most truly artistic developments in recent 
literature, perhaps, have been along the line of drama 
and poetry. The most interesting change is that 
made by the younger poets, who have tried to break 
away from old set standards of subject matter and 
form, and make their own verse forms to suit their 
own original thought. Many of those young radicals 
have written “free verse,” somewhat after the 
fashion of Whitman. The best known of contempor¬ 
ary poets are Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, 
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Amy 
Lowell. The sincerity of these poets and their devo¬ 
tion to art for its own sake is, in a time when so much 
writing is done hastily to catch the average busy 
person’s attention, at least a more hopeful sign of the 
appearance of something real and lasting in literature 
than any other recent development. (See also 
Drama; Novel; Poetry.) 

AMIENS ( a-me-an '), France. Towering above the 
low crowded houses of the ancient city of Amiens in 
northern France stands one of the greatest monuments 
left by the Middle Ages—its magnificent Gothic cathe¬ 
dral, the concentrated beauty of which is not sur¬ 
passed by any church building in the world. 

As the sun swings across the sky, the long shadow of 
this stone-ribbed giant sweeps from roof to roof of 
the low-lying houses of the city. It tells us of the 
days when those looming towers represented a power 
greater than that of king or state, and when the city 
dwellers seeing that shadow pass, looked upward with 
a mixture of fierce pride and fear. 

Upon this cathedral the 13th century townsmen 
put the best of their talent and wealth. The richly 
carved facade, the big rose window above it, the lofty 


AM IENS 1 

height of the interior, lighted by marvels of stained 
glass, are beauties never to be forgotten. 

Although Amiens was the General Headquarters 
of the British Army during the World War of 1914-18 
and was frequently bombed by German airplanes 
and fired upon by long range artillery, this noble 
cathedral escaped serious damage. For its protection 
in those days the French piled bags of sand high over 
the facade, and masked the scores of statues. 

At the beginning of the World War, during the 


THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 



The western facade or front of the magnificent Amiens Cathedral 
is a marvel of elaborate Gothic decoration. The three portais are 
crowded with carefully and lovingly executed statues of saints, and 
the niches of the gallery just below the beautiful stained glass 
rose window contain 22 statues representing the kings of Judea. 
The interior is no less strikingly beautiful, with a central nave 
towering to the height of 140 feet. 

thrust toward Paris, Amiens was briefly occupied 
by the right wing of the German army. Later its 
importance as a railway center and its commanding 
position on the Somme River made it the center of 
British army activities. The Germans made a deter¬ 
mined but vain effort to regain the city in their 
opening drive of 1918. 

The history of the city has been important since 
the days of the Roman Empire. Perhaps the most 
momentous event associated with its name is the 
famous treaty of Amiens between Napoleon and 
Great Britain, which was signed in the city hall, 
March 25, 1802, and which gave the British the only 
breathing spell they enjoyed during the wars following 
the French Revolution. It was the rupture of this 
treaty, in 1803, which enabled the United States to 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

117 









AMIENS 


AMOEBA 



purchase from Napoleon the Louisiana Territory, a 
possession which was too remote to be defended by 
the French. 

Amiens today is the center of a rich district and has 
important manufactures of silk, woolen, and cotton 
cloths, ribbons and carpets. Amiens is 81 miles from 
Paris by rail. Population, about 93,000. 

AMMONIA. This is a colorless pungent gas which 
is taken up by water 
with great readiness, 
thus making an 
alkaline liquid called 
ammonia-water, the 
ammonium hydrox¬ 
ide of chemists. 

This is the common 
form in which am¬ 
monia is used for 
household purposes. 

The name is prob¬ 
ably derived from 
the temple of Am¬ 
mon in the Libyan 
desert in Africa, 
where ammonia was 
produced. The 
name hartshorn is 
also used, because 
the shavings of 
horns have at times 
been used to pre¬ 
pare it. 

Ammonia is com¬ 
posed of nitrogen 
and hydrogen, its 
chemical symbol be¬ 
ing NH 3 . It is 
changed to a liquid 
or solid by cold 
and pressure. An 
important use of 
liquid ammonia is 
in the manufacture 
of ice (see Ice; 

Refrigeration). 

Until recently ammonia was obtained chiefly from 
the waste liquors in the manufacture of illuminating 
gas, but it is now manufactured on a large scale for 
the preparation of explosives by the direct union of 
hydrogen and nitrogen (see Nitrogen). Ammonia 
unites with acids to form ammonium salts. The 
carbonate (called also “sal volatile”) is much used for 
smelling salts, the chloride (“sal ammoniac”) is used 
in soldering and in medicine, and the sulphate and 
other salts are valuable fertilizers. 

Amoeba ( a-me' ba). In every pond and creek there 
are animals that are just as strange and varied as 
those in the menagerie of the circus or in the “zoo” of 
the city park. Some of these little animals are won¬ 
derfully small, as well as wonderfully made—so 


small that thousands of them may live in a drop of 
water and you need a powerful microscope to see 
them. 

The lowest forms of animal life, as of vegetable 
life, live in the water. The very, very smallest plant, 
such as the yeast plant, is just a single cell, too small 
to see without a microscope. It is alike all over, and 
gets its food by “soaking it in through the skin.” 

One of the tiniest 
of animals is the 
amoeba, composed 
of a single cell—a 
tiny bit of a jelly- 
like substance called 
protoplasm. The 
name amoeba comes 
from a Greek 
word that means 
“change,” and it is 
given it because the 
amoeba can change 
its shape whenever 
it wants to. When¬ 
ever the amoeba 
wants to move in a 
certain direction, 
little “feet”push out 
from that side of its 
body and draw the 
rest of the amoeba 
along. Whenever 
it wants to go in 
another direction it 
draws in these feet 
and makes feet on 
the other side. If 
you could put on 
a pair of wings as 
easily as the amoeba 
can make feet, you 
could do what every 
boy has wanted to 
do—fly like a bird. 

But when it wants 
to eat it doesn’t 
make a mouth, and put food in this mouth, as you 
might suppose. Whenever it touches one of the 
smaller one-celled plants or animals on which it 
feeds, it simply wraps itself around it like a little boy 
trying to carry a big watermelon, till the food lies on 
the inside. Some of the little animals it eats have 
shells. When it is through with one of these it 
unwraps itself and drops the shell. 

And it seems as if it had nerves, too. If you touch 
it, or shake it, it pulls itself together into just a little 
round bit of jelly. It will also move so as to keep 
in water of a proper temperature or to get away from 
strong light or any other unfavorable thing. 

The amoeba also breathes. Although it has no 
lungs or gills, it takes in oxygen and gives out car- 


THE LOWEST FORM OF ANIMAL LIFE 



One might imagine that an animal that could change its shape whenever it wanted 
to—like a fairy in a fairy tale—must be a very high order of animal indeed' But 
the facts are just the other way. The amoeba belongs to the very lowest form of 
animal life, and like other forms just learning the A B C of being, it lives in the 
water. Those two little figures in the lower right hand corner are not having a 
discussion (as one might think), but are twins that have resulted from the breaking 
in two of a single amoeba. Above and to the left of the twins is another amoeba 
just on the point of dividing. The dark spots near the center are the “nuclei ” 
or life centers, which also divide just before the final breakup into twins The 
other pictures show how the amoebas change their shapes and wrap themselves 
around their food. Of course, all these pictures are enormously magnified for 
the amoeba is so small you cannot see it at all with the unaided eye 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

118 






AMUNDSEN 


[AMSTERDAM 


bonic-acid gas, just as any other animal does when it 
breathes. The amoeba, in fact, has no true organs 
or specialized parts of any kind. The single cell of 
protoplasm of which it is composed does all the work 
of moving, eating, digesting, or breathing. In the 
central part of the cell, however, we see a little body 
which scientists call a nucleus. After the amoeba 
grows to a certain size, this nucleus divides and then 
the amoeba itself divides, and we 
have two amoebas where there 
was one before. These two 
amoebas themselves grow and 
divide often in about a day, and 
so we have four amoebas where 
formerly there was only one. In 
this way the race of the amoeba 
is continued and increased with¬ 
out parents or children, and with¬ 
out the individual amoeba ever 
growing old or dying except from 
accident or disease. 

When you think of the wonder¬ 
ful little amoeba, and all of its 
cousins, the other protozoa, don’t 
you believe that in a pool of 
standing water there are just as 
wonderful animals as in a circus? 

And don’t you see, also, that in 
the animal kingdom, Nature 
begins spelling out her wonder¬ 
ful story in little easy words of 
one syllable, just as you learned 
to read when you began with the 
primer? 

You may often find amoebas 
on the dead leaves in the bottom 
of pools, or in the home or school aquarium, or on 
the roots of duck weed and other small water plants. 
You may also put weeds from a pond in a glass jar 
filled with water, let it stand a few days in a warm 
room, and get specimens of amoebas and many other 
kinds of one-celled animals. Then you can watch 
them also through the microscope. 

AMSTERDAM, Holland. The city of Amsterdam, 
the capital of the Netherlands, has been well called 
the “Venice of the Netherlands.” Like Venice it is 
cut up by canals into some 90 islands, and like 
Venice it is a city made great by its commerce. The 
houses are built on piles driven into the low-lying 
soil, and the first step necessary in the erection of a 
building is to pump the site dry. The buildings are 
usually of brick, six or seven stories high, with quaint 
pointed gables toward the street. 

Amsterdam is the largest city in Holland and the 
chief center of Dutch industry. Founded in 1240 
when a dam was built across the River Amstel,—from 
which the city took its name—Amsterdam had be¬ 
come by the 17th century the foremost commercial 
center of the world, at a time when the Dutch were 


THE MINT TOWER IN AMSTERDAM 



the greatest maritime nation. Since that date its 
importance has declined, but it still has extensive 
commerce and holds first place in the diamond-cutting 
industry, a business for which it is famous. It has 
also sugar refineries and factories for making silk, 
ropes, dyes, chemicals, and gold and silver plate. 
It is the financial center of Holland and its Bank of 
the Netherlands is one of the leading financial 
institution of Europe. 

The Dam—a large square that owes 
its name to the fact of its being the 
eastern boundary of the original dam 
across the river—is the axis around 
which Amsterdam is built. From it 
radiate in a semicircle the principal 
streets of the city, and every street¬ 
car in the place starts from the Dam. 
Near it stands the Royal Palace 
and the New Church. The former 
is the property of the city and when 
the rulers of the Netherlands make 
their annual visit they are literally the 
guests of the city. The Ryks or State 
Museum is another notable building 
and in it are displayed a number of 
tho paintings of Rembrandt, Amster¬ 
dam’s most noted son. The city owns 
the municipal abattoir in which all 
meat must be slaughtered, and a 
municipal pawnshop which will lend 
money on anything from a hair comb 
to a grand piano. Population, about 
044,000. 

Amundsen 

Roald (1872- 
man to reach 


Here we see the Sophia-Plein, one of the many 
small public squares formed in Amsterdam by 
the intersection of its narrow winding streets. 
From the belfry of this massive Mint Tower, 
built in 1620, one of the finest views of the city 
may be obtained. 


( a'-mtin-sen ), 
). The first 
the South Pole, 
and the first, it is believed, to 
circumnavigate the globe through 
the ice-bound waters of the Arctic 
regions—this is the distinction 
that belongs to the Norwegian 
explorer, Roald Amundsen. 

The son of a Norwegian ship-owner, he was born in 
Borge, Smaalenene, Norway. He was educated at 
the University of Christiania, where he studied 
medicine for two years. Then, answering the call 
of the sea, he entered the naval service. At 25 years 
of age he was chosen, because of his strength and 
skill and knowledge of the sea, as member of an 
important expedition to the Antarctic. Over six feet 
tall, with sea-blue eyes and blond hair, he had the 
powerful build and the dauntless spirit of the Norse 
vikings of olden times. 

The Secret of Amundsen’s Success 
The more Amundsen saw of sea and land, the more 
he was fired with the ambition to seek farther and 
farther, to penetrate deeper and deeper into the 
mysteries of the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Not 
only was he fearless of danger and hardship, but he 
had the patience to spend years in study and prepara¬ 
tion. This, together with his careful attention to the 
smallest details, his power of organization, and his 
knowledge of dogs and skill in handling them as 
draught animals, accounts for his wonderful success. 


U11U , -e>—- ’ 

taincd in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of thie work 

119 











AMUNDSEN 


Finding the Northwest Passage | 


In 1903 he set sail in the ship Gjoa for the purpose 
of locating the magnetic North Pole. For 19 months 
he remained at King William Land in the north¬ 
eastern part of Greenland making observations, and 
as a result was able to show that the magnetic pole 
probably has no stationary position, but is in contin- 


cause, and after the United States entered the war, 
he came to America at the request of the government 
to address American audiences, and especially those 
made up of persons of Norwegian descent, on his 
impressions of the war. 

At last in the summer of 1918 Amundsen was able 



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RE C.IONS 


S VOYAGES AT BOTH 
THE EARTH 

The famous Norwegian explorer is shown here in the costume he 
wore when he made his famous dash over the Antarctic ice and 
snow and discovered the South Pole. Thick furs shielded him from 
the fierce cold winds that sweep the continent of Antarctica, while 
snowshoes and a stout stick held him up over treacherous crevasses. 

At the left we see the map of this historic voyage. 
Entering the Ross Sea, he brought his famous ship, 
the Fram, to anchor in the Bay of Whales, in King 
Edward Land. There he spent the winter of 1911 
(remember that the southern winter corresponds to the 
northern summer) and then started on his march for 
the pole. The map on the right pictures Amundsen’s 
earlier passage through the Northwest Passage between 
the Atlantic and the Pacific—the dotted line showing 
how his ship, the Gjoa, most of the time frozen 
tight in the ice, drifted in 1904-05 through the 
maze of islands skirting North America. 


ual movement. On this expedition, 
too, he traversed what navigators had 
been seeking for hundreds of years—the 
Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
This completed the first leg of his Arctic journey 
around the world. 

The Dash to the South Pole 

Returning to Norway, he made plans for an 
expedition in Dr. Nansen’s, ship, the Fram. This 
time he intended to drift right across the North 
Polar Sea. Then came the news that the American 
explorer Peary had discovered the North Pole, so 
Amundsen decided to make for the South Pole instead. 
The story of how he and his men wintered at the edge 
of the Great Ice Barrier on the Bay of Whales, and 
how they made their glorious dash over mountains 
and perilous glaciers to the South Pole, is told else¬ 
where in this work (see Polar Exploration). Honors 
were heaped upon Amundsen, and he lectured in 
most of the countries of Europe and North America, 
and in Australia. His book ‘The South Pole’ was 
translated into almost every language. 

But he did not rest on his laurels. In 1914 he was 
making preparations for another expedition, which 
he was forced to postpone, however, on account of 
the World War. Although his own country was 
neutral, he sympathized warmly with the Allies’ 


to set sail for the north polar regions. His plan was 
to drive his ship as far northward as he could, then 
to lodge it in the ice, and allow it to be dragged along 
with the enormous floes. He expected that it would 
take him near the North Pole. His purpose, however, 
was not primarily to reach the pole, but to make 
scientific observations in the far north. For 19 
months he was not heard from. Then he arrived at 
Anadyr, a trading post on Bering Sea in eastern 
Siberia, in April 1920, having left his ship and com¬ 
panions fast in the ice and come some hundreds of 
miles by sledge to seek supplies and news of the 
civilized world. In July he was in Nome, Alaska, 
on the opposite side of Bering Strait. He had sailed 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the seas 
bordering northern Europe and Asia, thus completing 
the second leg of his journey around the Polar Circle, 
which he had begun in 1903. After a couple of weeks 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

120 












ANDERSEN 



j ANATOM Y 

spent in Nome, he set out to rejoin his ship prepared 
for a five-year sojourn in the Arctic regions. Though 
suffering from injuries received in a hand-to-hand 
combat with a polar bear the year before, he was still 
dauntless in his purpose—to add to his glory as 
discoverer of the South Pole the honor of reaching 
the North Pole as well. 

ANATOMY. Why cannot an automobile fly like an 
airplane, or a sewing machine be used to saw wood? 
The answer is that every machine is built in a certain 
way, and what any machine can do depends on how 
it is constructed. Likewise every kind of animal and 
every kind of plant has its own peculiar structure, 
and its method of life depends on its structure. The 
science that studies the structure of living things is 
anatomy. It gets its name from the Greek words 
meaning “to cut up.” 

That branch of anatomy which is concerned with 
the very complex structure of the human body is 
human anatomy. If the microscope is used to make 
out the fine structure, we call the study microscopic 
anatomy or histology. The study of the changes 
caused by disease is pathologic anatomy or pathology. 
The study of the body from the viewpoint of perform¬ 
ing operations is called surgical anatomy. From a 
practical standpoint this is very important. Unless 
the surgeon knows the structure of the body he 
might cut an important nerve or blood-vessel. 

In comparative anatomy the structure of the higher 
animals is studied and comparisons made one with 
another and with lower ones from which they have 
developed. Comparative anatomy is important to 
the zoologist and botanist. In these connections it 
is usually called morphology, a name contrasted with 
physiology. In the broad sense morphology includes 
the construction of all plants and animals from the 
simplest to the highest. Finally we have anatomy 
for artists, nurses, and those engaged in physical 
education. 

How the Study of Anatomy Began 

Physicians and medical men were the first to take 
an interest in the anatomy of the human body, 
because a knowledge of it is necessary for medicine. 
It thus happens that the earliest observations in this 
line were directed toward making known the struc¬ 
ture of the human body and of animals rather closely 
related to man in points of structure. Anatomical 
study, therefore, began with the most complex 
animals instead of with the simpler ones, and this 
led to many misunderstandings. It was so difficult 
in the early days to get an opportunity to study the 
human body that the pioneer anatomists were 
obliged to gain their knowledge by dissections of 
animals like the dog and monkey. 

About 300 b.c. the dissection of the human body 
was legalized in the school of Alexandria, Egypt, the 
bodies of condemned criminals being devoted to that 
purpose. But this did not become general, and 
anatomy continued to be studied mainly from brute 
animals for nearly 2,000 years longer. 


In the early part of the Christian era, the writings 
of the Greek physician Galen (130-200 a.d.) became 
accepted as authority, and continued as such until the 
revival of anatomy by Vesalius in the 16th century. 

During the thousand years of the Middle Ages 
there was little progress in anatomical knowledge, 
owing to the fact that the church prohibited the dis¬ 
section of the human body, and also because dissec¬ 
tion was considered beneath the dignity of doctors 
and was left to ignorant barbers. Vesalius (1514- 
1564), a Belgian, left the universities of Louvain and 
Paris because of the difficulty of getting material 
for dissection, and went to the republic of Venice, 
where a liberal spirit prevailed; and at the age of 22 
he became professor of anatomy and surgery at 
Padua, Italy. He laid the foundations of modern 
anatomy, correcting many errors of Galen. Soon 
other men came to rely on their own observation and 
to believe their own eyes instead of what had been 
written in books. Then anatomy and other sciences 
advanced rapidly. The school at Padua became 
deservedly famous, and students were attracted to 
it from all over Europe and Britain. From England, 
William Harvey (1578-1657) found his way to Padua 
as a medical student. In the early part of the 17th 
century, he made an epoch in both anatomy and 
physiology by the demonstration (1628) of the cir¬ 
culation of the blood. Among the famous Italian 
teachers in anatomy following Vesalius were Fallopius 
and Eustachius (from whom is named the Eustachian 
tube of the ear). Thus in the 16th century human 
anatomy was well established. 

Recent Progress in the Science 

The subject became broadened, especially by the 
work of the Frenchmen Cuvier and Bichat at the 
opening of the 19th century. Naturalists began to 
take more interest in animals and plants, and there 
gradually grew up those who compared the structure 
of higher animals with the simpler ones. These com¬ 
parisons brought out so many resemblances and so 
many remarkable facts regarding construction that 
anatomy, which seems at first a dry subject, bceame 
endued with great interest. 

This is, briefly, the story of the rise of anatomy. 
It shows how the study began with a narrow aim— 
that of making known the structure of the human 
body for use of medical men—and has now become 
an important department of biology, dealing with 
the development of life and the structure of all living 
things. 

An dersen, Hans Christian (1805-1875). Do you 
know the story of the Ugly Duckling that turned 
out to be a beautiful Swan? It is really a story of the 
author’s own life; for little Hans Andersen was a long, 
lank, ungainly, awkward boy, as odd in his ways as 
in his looks, and no one in his boyhood could have 
guessed that some day he would become one of the 
world’s famous men. 

In a little town in Denmark he lived in one small 
room, which served also as a workshop for his father, 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

121 









ANDERSEN 



ANDES MOUNTAINS 



a poor cobbler. When Hans was 11 years old the 
father died, the mother had to go out washing, and the 
little boy was left to himself. He played with a toy 
theater, made clothes for the puppets, read plays, 

ANDERSEN AND HIS DREAM CHILDREN 


and invented stories. People laughed at the silly 
boy and wondered what would become of him. When 
he was sent to school he dreamed and idled away his 
time and learned very little. 

A Dreamer from His Youth 
He always felt that something wonderful was going 
to happen to him, just as in fairy tales. When he was 
14 he went to the city of Copenhagen to try his 
fortune. He wanted to become an actor or opera 
singer, but he was turned away from the theaters 
and reduced almost to starvation. He determined 
that he would write plays if he could not act them. 
In this he failed, too, at first; but a kind friend saw 
that he had talent and induced the king to help him 
get an education. He kept on writing dramas, poems, 
and sketches, and finally produced a novel, ‘The 
Improvisatore’, that brought him popularity. At 
last the poet’s troubles had come to an end. 


Ever since he was a little boy he had made up fairy 
tales, and children were delighted to hear him tell 
these stories. Someone suggested that he should 
write some of the stories down and put them in a 
book. He laughed at the idea, but decided to do it 
just for fun; and in 1835 the first volume of his im¬ 
mortal ‘Fairy Tales’ appeared. Before long he had 
become the idol of his own country and of all Europe. 

The Ugly Duckling had proved to be a Swan. He 
was still awkward, to be sure, and he continued to 
dress in odd old-fashioned clothes, but children 
forgot all about his queer appearance when they 
listened to his wonderful stories. On his travels he 
was received everywhere like a fairy prince. When 
as an old man he wrote the story of his life, he called 
it a “wonder story.” “How beautiful the world is!” 
he said, when he was dying. “How happy I am!” 

His statue stands in one of the public gardens of 
Copenhagen. Children play about it and look up 
into the kind homely face of the great writer, who 
stands there, book in hand and with finger uplifted, 
as if calling on them to listen to one of his immortal 
stories. 

Besides his fairy tales, Andersen’s chief works were: 
‘A Journey on Foot from Holman’s Canal to the East Point 
of Amager’ (1829); ‘The Improvisatore’ (1835); ‘Only a 
Fiddler’; ‘Picture-Book Without Pictures’ (1840); ‘Story 
of My Life’ (1853); ‘In Spain’ (1863). 

Andes MOUNTAINS. In the largest geographic 
sense the Andes are a part of the “world ridge” which 
nearly encircles the Pacific Ocean from the tip of 
South America, through Alaska, Japan, and the 
Philippines, to New Zealand. The Andes 
portion of this world ridge forms the longest 
mountain system on earth, for it extends 
. from the Isthmus of Panama to Tierra del 
Fuego, a distance of 4,500 miles. 

Ranging from the tropic heat of the north¬ 
ern coast to the frigid temperatures of the 
glaciers of Patagonia and of the snow-clad 
cones which rise under the equatorial sun, 
the Andes present a variation of climate that 
is unique. North of Chile the snow-line 
has an elevation of some 15,000 feet, and the broad 
plateaus below have the climate and products of 
temperate zone valleys. These regions were thickly 
populated by advanced tribes of Indians when 
Spanish explorers conquered them 400 years ago, 
and they are today the chief centers of population. 

The Andes and the Rains 

In the northern part of the continent the winds 
blow westward from the Atlantic, and give up their 
moisture as they rise over the mountains. As a result 
the eastern slopes of the Andes are deluged with 
tropical rains. Thus the Amazon is supplied with the 
greatest flood of waters that any river system on earth 
pours into the ocean; while just across the mountains 
on the Pacific slope lie the arid deserts of Peru and 
northern Chile. In the south, westerly winds prevail 
and the coastal plain and central valley of southern 
Chile are well watered, while east of the Andes in 


This is the great story-teller and some of the children of his dreams that have 
already charmed the children of several generations and will probably continue 
to delight others so long as little people delight in fairy stories. How many 
of your favorites do you recognize? Of course, you can’t miss “The Flying 
Trunk,” nor “The Little Mermaid,” nor “The Story of What the Moon Saw.” 
And then there is “The Little Match Girl” and “Little Claus and Big Claus.” 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


122 


place 


see information 









the same latitude are the dry plains of western 
Argentina. 

Except in the extreme south, the Andes are all but 
uncrossable. The high passes are mere gorgelike 
channels of mountain streams, with paths for pack 
mules and llamas winding along the overhanging 
slopes. Only at one point has a railroad been carried 
over the Chilean mountains. By awe-inpiring feats 
of engineering, by trestles across fearful chasms, and 
by bridges suspended at dizzy heights above stupend¬ 
ous abysses, the Trans-Andean railroad has been 
built (completed in 1910) to connect Valparaiso with 
Buenos Aires. Some day the projected Pan-American 
railway will run southward from Panama to the 
capital cities on the central plateau. 

Mineral Treasure Locked in the Mountains 

Fabulously rich mines of gold, silver, and copper 
were worked by the Incas and their Spanish con¬ 
querors. Deposits of lead, iron, platinum, quick¬ 
silver, and tin also exist. Indeed the Andes are so 
rich in minerals that their name is from the Indian 
word anta, which means copper, or metals in general. 
But these mountain fastnesses are so inaccessible and 
forbidding that the greater part of their wealth may 
long remain undeveloped. 

The Spanish name for the Andes is Cordilleras, from an 
old word meaning a cord or rope. At their narrow southern 
end the Andes form only one distinct range, which descends 
to Cape Horn in foothills and rises again in glaciated 
volcanic cones on Tierra del Fuego (“the land of fire”). 
In Chile a low coast range and high rocky, ridges called 
sierras inclose a wide central valley. From Peru northward 
the mass widens to 400 miles and is lifted to extensive 
plateaus bounded and crossed by lofty ranges and peaks. 
From Ecuador and Colombia, the Andes descend toward 
the low isthmus and throw out eastward a great spur along 
the coast of Venezuela. 

The plateaus and passes of the Andes are as elevated as 
the highest summits of the Alps, and peaks towering up to 
23,000 feet overtop everything on earth except the summits 
of the Himalayas. Chimborazo (20,517 feet), Sorata 
(21,484 feet), Illimani (21,024 feet), and Aconcagua (22,860 
feet) are among the highest peaks. As the Andes parallel 
the Pacific, in places rising in sheer cliffs from the coast, 
they appear in their greatest grandeur from the deck of a 
steamer at sea. Above this colossal upheaval rise the 
smoke-plumes of 36 active volcanoes. Cotopaxi (19,580 
feet) has the distinction of being the highest active volcano 
in the world. The entire Andean system is subject to 
violent earthquakes, which have devastated cities from 
Caracas to Valparaiso. 

ANDRE ( an'dra ), John (1751-1780). During the 
American War for Independence two men were 
arrested and hanged as spies. One was the American 
Nathan Hale, who was executed by the British; the 
other was the Englishman John Andre, who was 
arrested and hanged by the Americans. 

The name of Andre, a man of fine honor, is always 
associated with that of Benedict Arnold, the traitor, 
for it was in order to meet Arnold that Andre came 
within the American lines, and so became a spy. 
Arnold had decided to betray West Point on the 
Hudson to the British, and on the night of Sept. 21, 
1780, he contrived to have Major Andre brought 
ashore from the British ship Vulture, which was lying 


in the river below West Point. At the meeting of the 
two men Andre received plans of the fort from Arnold, 
which he had accepted in violation of the orders of 
his commander, who had told him to have nothing to 
do with papers. At the close of the interview Arnold 
returned to West Point and Andre attempted to 
return to the British camp. 

On the way Andre was stopped by three men. He 
thought they were British sympathizers and so told 
them that he was a British officer. Unfortunately for 
him the men were really American irregular troops, 
who promptly took him to the nearest American head¬ 
quarters. The officer in charge stupidly sent a letter 
to Arnold telling of the capture of the spy, so the 
traitor was able to escape to the British. Andre was 
tried, condemned, and executed as a spy. “His death, 
though according to the stern rule of war, moved even 
his enemies to pity; and both armies mourned the fate 
of one so young and so brave.” 

Today the body of Major Andre rests in Westminster 
Abbey among those of the famous men of England. On 
the spot where he was executed stands a monument which 
bears on one face the words of Washington: “He was more 
unfortunate than criminal. An accomplished man and 
gallant officer.” 

ANEMONE (a-nem'o-ne) . One of the most beautiful 
of our spring blossoms is this little “wind flower,” as 
it is sometimes called, which grows wild in woodlands 
and pastures. When found in the shade the colors 
are pink, rose-color, or purple; but in the sun they are 
white or slightly flushed with rose. The wild anemone 



has single flowers, 
but they can be 
doubled by cultiva¬ 
tion. The dainty 
blossoms, slightly 
fragrant, nod and 
sway on their slender stems, 
which bend but never break 
in the strong blasts of early 
spring. At night or during a 
rain storm they curl up and 
go to sleep. 

Poetry and myth give many 
stories of the anemone. The 
Greeks believed that it sprang 
from the tears dropped by the 
goddess Aphrodite (Venus) as she wept in the forest 
over the death of her lover Adonis. They believed, 
too, that only the wind could open its petals. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

123 








ANEMONE 


ANESTHETICS 




The anemone, which belongs to the crowfoot or 
buttercup family, is closely related to the hepatica 
and has many species. It grows in many parts of 
Asia, is greatly prized by the Chinese who use it 
in their funeral rites, and is a 
great favorite in Europe as well as 
in Canada and the United States. 

Scientific name of the common wood 
anemone, Anemone quinquefolia. 

Flowers are about 1 inch across, with 
calyx of 4 to 9 oval, petal-like sepals, 
but no petals; numerous stamens 
cluster about the small green pistils. 

The slender green stem grows at right 
angles to the long horizontal root- 
stock. The leaves grow in whorls of 
3 to 5 (whence the name quinquefolia) 
below the flower; they are divided into 
3 to 5 notched and lobed parts. 

Anesthetics. No other single 
achievement of science has done 
so much to relieve human suffer¬ 
ing as the discovery that certain 
chemicals could be used to stop 
all sensations of pain during 
surgical operations. These chem¬ 
icals are called “anesthetics,” and 
the effect they produce is called 
anesthesia, a Greek word meaning 
“without sensation” introduced 
into the English language by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was 
one of the first to recognize the 
great boon to humanity. 

Until the middle of the 19th 
century surgical operations were 
performed while the patient was 
fully conscious, strapped to the 
operating table. Many life-saving 
operations could not be performed 
at all, and human beings died by 
the thousands because three sim¬ 
ple chemicals— ether, chloroform, 
and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) 
were still practically unknown. 

The credit for first discovering 
anesthetics is a matter of dispute. 

In 1800 Sir Humphry Davy, a 
great British chemist, announced 
experiments with nitrous oxide, 
and suggested the use of this gas 
in surgery; but his suggestion was 
unheeded. In 1818 Michael Far¬ 
aday, another noted British chem¬ 
ist, showed that ether also had similar anesthetic 
effects. It remained for America first to put these 
chemicals to practical use. In 1842 Dr. Crawford W. 
Long of Danielsville, Ga., successfully removed a 
tumor from a patient who was under the influence of 
ether, but for years he was not given credit for his 
pioneer work because he did not publish reports of this 
and similar operations. Two years later, Dr. Horace 


Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Conn., proved the value 
of nitrous oxide by having a tooth extracted while 
under its influence. In 1846 Dr. W. T. G. Morton, 
a Boston dentist, used ether with success on a number 

SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON DISCOVERING THE POWER 
OF CHLOROFORM 


This picture shows how Sir James Y. Simpson and two of his friends risked their lives in the 
endeavor to discover a better anesthetic than ether. You see Sir James is just coming to, 
while his friends are still unconscious from the vapor of the chloroform they had inhaled. 
“My first thought,” said the great scientist, “was: ‘This is much better than ether!’ ” 

of patients and administered it later with equal success 
in surgical cases. And in 1847 Sir James Y. Simpson, 
an English scientist, announced his discovery of the 
anesthetic properties of chloroform. 

At first these pioneers met with great opposition. 
But when it became known that Queen Victoria had 
taken chloroform during medical treatment, the 
last obstacle was removed. 


For any subject not found in its a l p ha betical place see information 

124 









Different Types of Anesthetics 



ANESTHETICS 



Although many other drugs have been found with anes¬ 
thetic properties, the three already mentioned are still the 
most commonly used. A brief description of each will suffice. 

Nitrous Oxide.— This is called “laughing gas” because 
when inhaled in a weak mixture it tends to make the patient 


a great success, however, as it varies widely in its effects on 
different patients. 

Local Anesthetics. —The methods already mentioned 
produce complete anesthesia, in which the whole body is 
rendered insensible to pain. There are other methods, 
however, which produce local anes- 
FROM PAIN thesia, and which are now much in 

use. A fine spray of ether or ethyl 
chloride, for instance, will freeze 
any part of the skin, which may 
then be cut without sensation, but 
the after-effects are as painful as in 
severe frost-bite. Many drug com¬ 
pounds such as cocaine, eucaine, 


These illustrations show two ways in which anesthetics are admin¬ 
istered. In the upper, the patient is being given ether, which falls 
slowly drop by drop from the bottle to a piece of cotton in a mask 
over the patient’s face. From this he inhales the vapor that brings 
the sweet oblivion to pain. In the second picture “laughing gas” 
is being administered. The mouth and nostrils are completely shut 
out from the outside air by a rubber mask which fits close to the face. 
Through the glass the operator can watch the face of the patient 
and so see how the anesthetic is taking effect. The cylinder with 
whicn the tube is connected contains the nitrous oxide. 

laugh immoderately. It is a colorless and odorless gas, 
consisting of two parts nitrogen and one part oxygen. A 
few breaths of a proper mixture are enough to make the 
patient unconscious and in expert hands there is absolutely 
no danger, nor does it have any unpleasant after-effects. 
However, it does not produce the complete muscular relaxa¬ 
tion often required in major operations, and its use is gener¬ 
ally confined to dental work and minor surgery. 

Ether. —The scientific name of this gas is diethyl oxide. 
It is colorless, but has a very pungent suffocating smell. 
For this reason the patient is usually made unconscious 
with nitrous oxide before ether is applied. It is considered 
less dangerous than chloroform, but sometimes has a serious 
irritating effect on the lungs and is not used for patients 
with tendencies to pulmonary trouble. Recovery from 
ether is nearly always accompanied by nausea. 

Chloroform. —This is also a colorless gas with a strong 
sweetish odor, not altogether unpleasant. It is perhaps 
the most powerful of all anesthetics, and is not ordinarily 
used for patients with weak hearts. The symptoms of 
recovery are not so violent, however, as with ether. It is 
preferred by European surgeons, while American doctors 
incline towards ether. The number of deaths on the 
operating table traceable to chloroform is about 1 in 3,000. 

Two other anesthetics have recently come into occasional 
use, ethyl chloride and a mixture of scopolamin and morphine. 
The former is a gas resembling in its effects both nitrous 
oxide and ether. “Twilight sleep” is the semi-conscious 
condition produced by the scopolamin mixture administered 
by injection through the skin. It leaves the patient appar¬ 
ently semi-conscious and able to move, but after the opera¬ 
tion there is no recollection of the ordeal. It has not proved 


novocaine, stovaine, etc., are preferred for local operations. 
They are injected in the region which is to be operated 
upon and cieate numbness in that part alone, leaving the 
patient fully conscious. Such local anesthesia does away 
with the element of danger and with most of the unpleasant 
sensations of recovery, but cannot be used successfully in 
the more serious major operations. 

A process which has been successful in many operations 
upon the lower part of the body consists in injecting some 
anesthetic drug like stovaine into the sheath which contains 
the fluid around the spinal cord. As a result the patient 
ceases to have any feeling from the point of injection down¬ 
ward. The delicacy of this operation, h.owever, makes it 
difficult. 

A new method called nerve-blocking has very recently 
aroused much interest. No drugs whatever are used. The 
skilled specialist finds the chief nerve cord leading to the 
spinal column from the place to be operated upon. Sharp 
pressure is brought to bear upon this nerve and soon all 
feeling disappears in the region to which it leads. The 
effect is the same as when a person’s arm or leg “goes to 
sleep,” which like nerve-blocking is simply the result of 
accidental and prolonged pressure on the central nerve of the 
arm or leg. Many important operations have been performed 
in this way. (See also Hospitals; Medicine and Surgery.) 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at 

125 


the end of this 


work 


t 

















DRAGON FLY 
7 WK5. 


MOTH 3 


TURTLE 350 VftS. 

mb jg£ «* ijm •»*., 4 H 


CRAWFISH 


CARP ZOO YRS. 


PIGEON 
20 YRS. 


RAVEN 
IOO YRS 


BLACK 

BIRD 


SQUIRREL 4 YRS, 


MOUSE 
► feYRS 


GOOSE 80 YRS 


GOLDEN 
EAGLE 
tQ4 YRS. 


WHALE 500 YRS. 


ELEPHANT ISO YRS. 


SWAN 150 YRS 


SNAIL 2 !4 YRS. 


LOCUST 4 WK$. 


/tv-csr ■ , 

TOAD 40 


One of the mysteries which science has not yet fathomed is the extraordinary difference in the length of life of various animals. The May-fly 
for example, which springs from its pupa case at 1 o’clock is approaching old age by 4, and by 5 o’clock is dead; while it is believed that 
there are whales alive today which might have beheld the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. Here we see the maximum age attained 
by many of the commoner creatures. Some of these ages, such as that of the golden eagle, are matters of actual record. In the case of 
whales, turtles, and some other long-lived animals, age is estimated from the rate of growth of whalebone, shell, etc. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place 


see information 


126 




















The Struggle for Existence 



ANIMAL KINGDOM 


The VARIED WEB of ANIMAL LIFE 


Animal kingdom. 

What is the differ¬ 
ence between plants and 
animals? A noted scien¬ 
tist once said that“ plants 
are animals that have 
made a business of stand¬ 
ing stillThat is a good 
rough-and-ready distinc¬ 
tion but it will not fit all 
cases, for there are a few 
animals like sponges and 
corals that remain fixed in one place nearly all their 
lives. It is easy enough to tell one of the higher 
animals from one of the higher plants, but it is not 
so easy when we get down to very primitive types 
of life like the sea-anemone. In fact, there are 
certain very low forms of life—especially those 
minute one-celled organisms from which scientists 
believe all higher forms have developed—which even 
the most learned men do not know how to classify. 
As we go up the scale of life, however, we find one 
fairly clear distinction, in addition to the fact that 
nearly all animals move and have special organs for 
moving, while most plants do not. That distinction 
is this: nearly all plants get their food from gases in 
the air and chemical substances in the soil and 
water, while animals live by eating plants and 
other animals. 

The struggle for existence in the animal world 
therefore seems fiercer and more cruel than among the 
plants. The three great things in an animal’s life 
are to eat, to avoid being eaten, and to continue its 
kind. Throughout the animal kingdom we find the 
most marvelous adaptations to carry out these 
purposes. Thus the lion and the tiger are provided 
with long claws and sharp teeth for capturing their 
prey. The porcupine has sharp bristles to drive 
away an enemy; the skunk drives off his pursuers by 
throwing off a disgusting odor; and the flying-fish 
actually leaps out of the water and escapes danger— 
by the use of its winglike fins. Still another example 
of adaptation is the bright plumage of birds, which 
is their show dress during the mating period. There 
are also butterflies whose wings so perfectly imitate 
the blossoms or leaves of trees that when they attach 
themselves to the proper twigs only the keenest eye 
can pick them out. 

Animals that are not well adapted to the struggle 
for life soon die off and disappear. As it is, nature 
produces millions of animals which survive only for 
a brief period; in the great struggle for existence 
enormous numbers die when young or are killed and 
eaten by other animals. If this were not the case a 
single species would soon overrun the entire earth. 
The conger eel, for example, is said to lay 15,000,000 
eggs. It is estimated that if each egg grew to ma- 

contained in the Easy Reference 


turity, and reproduction 
continued at the same 
rate, every ocean and 
sea- would be full of con¬ 
ger eels within ten years. 

The length of life of an 
animal seems to be con¬ 
nected in some way with 
its size and the rate at 
which it multiplies. The 
largest animals, which 
have few young, such as 
the whale with a span of life believed to be 300 years 
or more, and the elephant, which sometimes reaches 
the age of 150, seem to live the longest. On the 
other hand certain flies which multiply very rapidly 
live only a few hours. Some animals such as turtles, 
crocodiles, and many snakes live to great age, ap¬ 
parently because they lead such sluggish lives. 

After thousands of years of study scientists have 
been able to trace out the general design of this great 
web of life. They have learned that all the animals, 
from the tiny one-celled amoeba to man himself, are 
related to one another; and they have classified all 
the various kinds of animals—more than 500,000 of 
them—showing how they are related. At the head 
of the animal world they place man, in the same group 
with the monkeys, the manlike apes, and the other 
animals that nurse their young. For man, we know 
now, is closely related in structure to these animals, 
and differs from them rather in the development of 
his intelligence than in his bodily structure ( see 
Evolution). 

One of the simpler schemes of classification, in 
which the whole animal kingdom is divided into eight 
branches, is as follows: 

1. Protozoa. The simplest animals, microscopic and usually 
composed of a single cell such as the amoeba or the 
malaria germ; if of several cells, these are all of one kind. 
(All the remaining groups are many-celled and are 
collectively called metazoa.) 

2. Porifcra. Sponges. 

3. Coelenterates. Jellyfishes, sea-anemones, coral animals, 
etc. 

4. Vermes. Worms, a very large group, often separated 
into several branches; includes jointed worms, smooth 
worms, shelled worms, tapeworms, etc. 

5. Mollusks. Clams, mussels, snails, oysters, slugs, devil¬ 
fishes, cuttlefishes, and squids. 

6. Echinoderms. Animals with spiny skeletons like star¬ 
fishes, sea-urchins, sea-cucumbers, etc. 

7. Arthropods. Lobsters, crabs, crayfish, spiders, centi¬ 
pedes, bees, ants, butterflies, beetles, etc. There are 
400,000 known species in this branch, more than all 
the known species in all the other branches combined. 

8. Vertebrates. 

(a) Fishes. 

(b ) Amphibians. Frogs, toads, and newts. 

(c) Reptiles. Snakes, lizards, alligators, turtles. 

(d) Birds. 

(e) Mammals. Animals that nurse their young, includ¬ 
ing man. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 


IT O W amazing are the variations of structure and habit 
-L included in the Animal Kingdom, and how fascinat¬ 
ing is the study! From the tiny one-celled Amoeba to 
Man, there are more than half a million known forms of 
animals, differing enormously in size, form, color, and 
mode of life—in the ways they get their food, in their 
adaptation to the struggle for existence, in their wonder¬ 
ful manifestations of animal instinct, often surpassing 
man’s powers of reason. Every day science turns over 
a new page in the living book of Nature, and gradually 
we have learned to read the great laws that govern this 
maze of struggling beings, from the tiniest animal germ 
to the gigantic Whale. 


127 




ANIMAL KINGDOM 


Different Kinds of Animals 



The accompanying “genealogical tree” shows, in 
a general way, many things of the relationships, 
progress of evolution, and relative complexity of 
the animals which compose the main groups of the 
animal kingdom. The position of groups in the 
scale of life is pretty closely shown, with the simplest 
forms of life at the bottom 
of the page and the highest 
at the top. It is often said 
that a “genealogical tree” 
of the animal kingdom is 
much like a real tree, with 
only the end twigs shown, 
and the trunk and main 
limbs left out. This means 
that, in the evolution of 
life, the more primitive 
forms of life almost all dis¬ 
appear or evolve into higher 
forms of life—very much as 
the original Puritan type 
of New England has 
evolved into the somewhat 
changed descendants of 
New England of today, 
and the more changed de¬ 
scendants of more remote 
parts like Kansas. So the 
stages marked “primitive” 
in the “tree” are mainly 
hypothetical. A “tree” may 
be of great help in viewing 
the animal kingdom in a 
large and comprehensive 
way, but it must always 
be remembered that the 
relationships and origins 
are not matters of scientific 
demonstration, like most 
matters of science. 

In evolution it is the 
more primitive types all the 
while, and not more spec¬ 
ialized forms, that evolve 
into higher types—much as 
a boy and not a man is 
taken for training in some highly specialized vocation. 
Crabs, for instance, could not be used to evolve 
vertebrate animals. As the “tree” shows, while 
primitive types have evolved into new and higher 
types, some of their relatives have remained at pretty 
much the old level, with only slight evolution. For 
instance, while the many forms of higher mammals 
have evolved from primitive mammals, some of the 
latter have changed but little relatively, and are still 
found as the lowly mammals known as marsupials 
or pouched animals. 

Keeping in mind that the details of the “tree” are 
only probable, we may trace some of the main events 
in the evolution of animal life. Primitive life gave 


rise to the simplest single-celled plants and animals, 
which were the points of departure for the evolution 
of the plant and animal worlds. The simplest 
protozoa were to give rise to the thousands of kinds 
of protozoa of great variety, as well as to colonies of 
protozoa—colonies of cells—and these to forms sim¬ 


ilar to the hydra. The hydra-like animals gave rise 
to the more specialized polyps and jellyfishes, as well 
as to higher animals. 

One of the most interesting and important hypotheti¬ 
cal types is a form more complex than the hydra, 
which became the point for the evolution not only of 
the higher forms of life but also of the large number 
of diverse types often classified together as “worms.” 
These “simple worms” in the “tree” were not worms 
as you usually know them, but probably very small 
and simple, perhaps swimming and crawling, and not 
jointed. The first origins of the starfish group must 
have been very early in the evolution of life, but at 
best they are very obscure. 


A“GENEALOGICAL TREE”OF THE ANIMALS 


MAN 


Even-toed hoofed animals 
(Cattle, pigs) 

Whales, porpoises 


Odd-toed hoofed animals 
(Horses, zebras, etc.) 

Monkeys 
Elephants 


Anthropoid apes 
(Gorillas, orangs, etc.) 




Bi 


rds 


Pouched animals 

(Kangaroos, opossums) Primitive mammals-Armadillos 

* Primitive reptiles 

Primitive amphibia 

Bony fishes —v Lung’fishes 

(Bass, cod) \ | 

Primitive cartilaginous fishes 
Primitive vertebrates 
Arachnids Lancelet 

(Spiders, etc.) >_ | 

| Primitive chordates 

Insects 

Crustacea 

Myriapods ^ (Crawfish, crabs) Ringed worms 

(Centipedes) 1 (Earthworm) 


Seals Flesh-eating animals 
(Lions, bears) 


Gnawing animals Archaeopteryx 
(Rabbits, rats) (Lizard-bird) 

Crocodiles „ 

Turtles 




Echinoderms 
(Starfish, sea urchins) 


Roundworms 

(Threadworms) 

Rotifers 


Higher plants 


Sponges 
Primitive protophyta 


Primitive ringed worms 


Simple "worms” 


Simple coelenterates 
(Hydra) 

Colonial protozoa 
(Volvox) 

"'Primitive protozoa- 

-PRIMITIVE LIFE 



.Amphibia 
(Frogs, toads) 

■ Cartilaginous fishes 
(Sharks, rays) 


-Tunica tes 


Cephalopods ^ na ^ 8 
(Octopus, squids) 

_ Bivalves 

(Clams, oysters) 
Brachiopods 
(Lamp shells) 



(Moss animals) 


Flukes 

Tapeworms 

Complex polyps. 
(Corals, jellyfishes) 


Complex protozoa 

_I 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place 
128 


see information 






















Butterfly. 

Ant , and other Indents 


Lobster, Crab 

•»*- hi — 


Centipede , 


The greatest chapter in the whole wonderful history of science—the story of evolution—is here shown in striking form. Beginning with 
protoplasm, the physical basis of all life, we find first the division into plant and animal groups. Following the animal branch we come to 
such simple creatures as the sponge and the jellyfish; then the worms, which branched on one side into the centipedes, lobsters, crabs, 
spiders, and insects, and, on the other side, into such animals as the starfish and sea-urchins. With the lamprey come the early forms 
of vertebrates or backboned animals. We even find the fish, which separate on one side into the amphibia (such as frogs and toads), and 
on the other into reptiles. The reptiles in turn developed into birds and mammals, leading up to the manlike apes and finally to Man himself. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

129 


THE WONDERFUL STORY OF EVOLUTION 


Co w 


Horse 




Alligator , Turtle , etc 


Snake 

i 




Fish 


Lamprey 











1 \ Examples of Animal Intelligence | 


1 ANIMAL KINGDOM 

One of the most obscure points in the evolution of 
life is the origin of vertebrates, or backboned animals, 
from invertebrates. Somewhere there came in a new 
type, with the nervous system on the back side and 
other new characters, which scientists call“chordates,” 
but still without a jointed “backbone.” This hypo¬ 
thetical type gave rise to several very lowly relatives 
of the vertebrates as well as to real vertebrates, with 
a jointed backbone. The fishes with only a gristly 
or cartilaginous skeleton gave rise to fishes with bony 


skeletons, as well as to fishes with both lungs and 
gills; and these, through amphibia and perhaps 
reptiles, to the highest animals. Another illustration: 
living lizards are nearest the primitive reptiles. But 
the lizards have given rise to the more specialized 
reptiles, as well as to birds—a very uniform group. 

The “tree” is worth a good deal of study if you will 
keep in mind that the details of relationship and 
position of the groups are probable, but in most 
cases not a matter of scientific demonstration. 


Amazing Instances of Animal Behavior 



N ONE of the simplest living creatures we 
know, we find a sort of mind. As we 
think of the animal kingdom, it is hard to 
HI resist the feeling that animals have learned 
the mottoes of our copy-books. They seem at first 
sight to act every day as if they had taken thought for 
the morrow. They take the line of least resistance. 
They look before they leap. They know that in 
union there is strength. They save for a rainy 
day. They seem to understand quite well that a 
stitch in time saves nine, and that for everything 
there is a time and for everything a place. 

Think of the spider and its web. The web seems 
as well thought out as the Statue of Liberty in New 
York harbor. The spider builds as if it had studied 
stress and strain like an engineer. It makes one 
kind of road for itself and another for its victims; 
it meets the danger of storms by making new runners. 

Go to the ant. How many among the millions who 
trample them to death know the wonderful things 
these creatures do? They will capture the green 
aphids that devour our roses, make them prisoners, 
build galleries in trees to keep them in, milk them, 
protect their eggs to insure a continued supply, and 
when new aphids are born the ants will carry them 
to the plants that aphids live on, and take them 
back to prison. 


The Beaver’s “ Open Port throughout the Year ” 
Long before man had built his first bridge the 
beaver had built his dam; long before man had 
thought it all out the beaver had arched his dam 
against the stream and made little sluices. One of 
the fundamental rules of engineering was working 
in the world ages before Archimedes. The beaver 
builds a lodge at his dam and a storehouse for winter. 
For ages he has solved the problem that so long baffled 
Russia; frozen in by ice, he seeks and finds a free 
water gate through which he can receive supplies. 

The bees, perhaps the first sanitarians in the world, 
have established a civilization that excites our won¬ 
der. They toil and build and store; they obey the 
laws and punish those who break them; they live and 
move and have their being impelled by a patriotism 
of the hive beyond the dreams of men. 

We think of this wonderful behavior of animals and 
call it instinct. But what is instinct but a sort of 


immutable mind, fixed by natural law? A man is 
lost; he works his way home by the stars, and we call 
it mind at work. A crab is lost on the Long Island 
coast; it crawls back a hundred miles to its home in 
New Jersey, and we call it instinct. We must not 
deceive ourselves by the words we make. Probably 
the spider, the ant, the beaver, and the bee do not 
reason as we do; but if intelligence consists in the 
individual’s ability to profit by his own experience, 
as well as the racial experience which constitutes in¬ 
stinct, we cannot deny intelligent behavior even to 
the lowest animal forms. 

A crocodile taken out of its egg will find its way 
instantly towards a stream; a frog put in a bag and 
taken from water will go straight back to water on 
being set free. 

A young eel, unable to develop in the sea, leaves 
the tidal river and goes far up the inland waters; and 
when the time comes it returns to the sea to lay its eggs. 

The little shellfish called limpet has no eyes, but 
every limpet knows its spot on a rock. It comes down 
at low tide and goes about and feeds, and it finds its 
way back infallibly to its chosen dwelling-place. 

The nightingale born on an English hilltop flies 
to Africa; it goes to the right place at the right time, 
moved by some innermost understanding. It is not 
driven by hunger, for if it stayed till hunger came it 
would arrive too late. Cage a nightingale and it 
will beat its wings against the bars when the time 
comes to go. 

A carrier pigeon will bring a general his dispatches; 
one has been known to fly from Rome back to its 
loft in an English town. It took a month, flew a 
thousand miles, and crossed a range of mountains 
and 20 miles of sea. 

That Wonderful Sense of Direction 

A horse will take a lost man home on a dark night; 
a horse has taken its dead driver home through the 
busy streets of a great city. A cat, taken a hundred 
miles in a box, will find its way back to the old fire¬ 
side. A St. Bernard dog will find a traveler buried 
in the snow, dig him out and fetch help. 

In the deepest sea we find some form of life; in the 
lowest fife we find some sort of mind. We all know 
wise animals that seem to act with an intelligence we 
do not find in some men. 


For any subject not found in its alp habetical place see i nf or motion 

130 











Do Animals Think? 


ANIMAL KINGDOM 



There was in Pelorus Sound, New Zealand, for 20 
years a dolphin, protected by the government, that 
piloted ships through this dangerous strait. As a ship 
approached, Pelorus Jack would dart from his hiding 
place and swim ahead, going steadily until he reached 
French Pass, where he disappeared. He never went 
beyond, but up to that point no human pilot was ever 
more reliable than he. 

There are cormorants that catch fish for us, chetahs 
that catch deer; captive elephants that catch and 
help tame wild elephants. They will do these things 
for their employers as unfailingly as workmen. 

There was a frog that answered to its name when 
called by Professor Romanes. There were fishes that 
would answer a bell rung by Sir Joseph Banks. There 
was a tortoise in Gilbert White’s village of Selborne 
in England which would hobble every morning to 
meet the old lady who fed it. A crocodile has been 
known to have an affection for a cat. A snake has 
been known to pine on being separated from its owner, 
and to spring with delight when he returned. 

The Buffaloes and the Tsetse Fly 

Everywhere the wisdom of life is manifest in the 
animal kingdom, and the student of evolution finds 
himself confronted with facts such as those concerning 
South African buffaloes in Matabelaland. They used 
to feed by day, now they come out by night. They 
have changed their habits since plague destroyed near¬ 
ly the whole of their race, and it is not impossible that 
these dumb creatures may have discovered that the 
tsetse fly which carries the plague germ does not 
fly by night. There would be nothing incredible in 
that. Animals act consistently as if they knew. 

Could anything be more wonderful than the pre¬ 
ciseness of the knowledge of the fairy-fly ( Mymaridae ), 
the tiniest of insects, sometimes so small that five 
can walk abreast through a pinhole? The mother 
finds a larger insect, and lays her egg in its body 
exactly when and exactly where the egg of the larger 
insect is forming. The larger egg is formed with the 
fairy-fly’s egg inside it, and the fairy-fly’s egg produces 
a grub, which lives by eating the larger egg and then 
emerges with four wings. 

But the examples are beyond all counting. We find 
them in thousands among horses and dogs. Who has 
not heard of the bear that will stir the water to bring 
a piece of bread towards him, or the crow that will 
drop a mussel on a stone from a height of 90 feet, and 
seems to choose its favorite stones for breaking victims 
on? Who put into the head of the eagle the idea of 
driving out one deer from a herd and frightening it 
towards a precipice? Who will deny the power of a 
sort of “thinking-out” to the crow that fetched a com¬ 
panion to help to battle with a dog for its dinner-bone? 

The Ant that Sows and Reaps 

And what shall we say of the harvest ant, which has 
the marvelous power of collecting seeds, putting them 
down in its warm moist nest, where they should natur¬ 
ally start to grow, and of checking their growth till 
it suits it that growth should begin? When at last 



the seeds begin to grow, the harvest ant lets the proc¬ 
ess proceed until the sugar is formed, and then carries 
off the sugar to dry in the sun. 

We see it everywhere, this deliberate preparation 
for the morrow. The butcher-bird impales his prey 
on thorns, and leaves it till he wants it. Squirrels and 
jays and woodpeckers, like rats and mice and men, 
lay up stores for the future. Even the rattlesnakes 
gather into companies for warmth in the long winter 
sleep, and separate when the need for food comes. 
They know there is warmth and comfort in company, 
but that too many rattlesnakes together will im¬ 
poverish food supplies when they awake. They mo¬ 
bilize at the right time for the right purpose, on the 
principle which drives many groups in the animal 
world to defend their own herds against animals that 
hunt in packs. 

If we could speak of affection in the animal kingdom 
we should hardly expect to find it in wasps and 
crocodiles; yet allied to their intelligence is something 
touched with the glow of emotion. The crocodile 
buries its eggs in the hot sand, comes out and taps the 
ground, and when the young cry out scrapes the sand 
away and introduces them to the world. The solitary 
wasp, living for the future of the race, stores up before 
it dies food for its unborn that it will never see. 

Mother Love in the Animal World 

The chapter of natural history which tells of the 
gallantry of the stickleback and the devotion of the 
whale in defense of their young is one of the most 
beautiful that can be written, and it can be multiplied 
a thousand times. Men waited ages for news of life 
in the Antarctic regions, and when it came at last it 
was the old, old story of a mother’s devotion to her 
children. Nothing in the realm of nature is more 
touching than the wonder of the emperor penguins and 
their eggs. They stand for weeks during the long 
Antarctic night with the egg between their feet, keep- 
it warm; and the parents share the patient task 
between them, faithful witnesses to that mysterious 
power which reaches everywhere, deep into the inner¬ 
most, wide unto the outermost. 

Many students of animal behavior—especially 
those who believe in a “mechanistic” explanation for 
almost all living phenomena—seek to account for 
many such instances as these on other grounds than 
the possession of intelligence. In the lower organ¬ 
isms especially, they find the explanation in what are 
called various “tropisms,” or the tendency of living 
matter to respond definitely to such external stimuli 
as light, heat, touch, and the like. Thus they 
explain the behavior of the moth when it flies to 
certain death in the candle’s flame as a response to 
the stimulus of light. They argue that if one attrib¬ 
utes intelligence to the single-celled organisms, we 
must do the same also for many of the elements of 
the body, especially the wandering cells that respond 
to stimuli and move about in the body in much the 
same ways as independent organisms living freely in 
nature. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-I ndex at the end of this work 

131 














(animals,prehistoric 


The Death Struggle in the Swamp] 



A nimals, prehistoric. It was hot and stifling 
in the swamp. From the brackish water the 
heat-mist rose and swirled slowly over the jungle-like 
foliage. Great ferns as big as trees held their tracery 
aloft in the still air; huge palms bloomed heavily, the 
flowers shining on their trunks; giant horsetails 20 feet 
tall stood like stiff pillars; 


than any dragon 
seen in a nightmare, 
a creature 65 feet long and 
weighing nearly 40 tons, with a 
huge tail over 20 feet long, a body the 
size of an elephant’s, and a ridiculous little 
head set on a long heavy neck. It moved slowly 
away from the bank, pausing now and again to feed 
on the tops of the fern trees. 

But suddenly its small stupid eyes showed signs of 
alarm. It turned and started at a clumsy run for the 
shelter of the water. Too late! For another creature 
had sprung upon it, one of the most terrible hunting 
creatures that has ever 


and over the mud of the M GLUONS of years ago, in the "Age of Reptiles," the ,; ved „ was t , 

, i , t xv± earth was inhabited by animals unlike any creatures ., ,, & 

bank great mosses clam- today Crea( sWpjd § rontosams crunched the tops as prey, though it was 

bered and a tangle of Q j dank trees; bloodthirsty and agile Allosaurs preyed *°ng, but it was 

swamp undergrowth upon these herbiverous giants; Pterodactyls of varying much more agil<}. It 
steamed. In the warm sizes, with their batlike wings, coursed the air, while leaped and ran on two 
water aquatic plants grew Ichthyosaurs and other “sea serpents” sported in the ocean great hind legs as a bird 
in masses. depths. Fossil remains of these ancient monsters are runs, and its three-toed 

There was no man alive f ound imbedded in rocks and soil in many parts of the f ee t were armed with 
to breathe the stifling air, world > and f rom these scientists have been able to tell us strong claws> Terrible 
for man had not yet been much of the probable history and habits o these prmuUve ^ were in its t 
, , . , creatures and to reconstruct their forms for our museums , , , ,, , 

bom, and would not be , natura i history head and a blow from its 

for millions of years to * powerful tail was a deadly 

come. For this was in the Mesozoic geological age, thing. Only its front legs, like tiny arms, were 
the “age of reptiles” before even any mammals had weak and almost useless. 


been evolved (see Geology). The swamp was in 
Wyoming, where the highlands are now. 

A Nightmare, Sixty-five Feet Long! 

In an arm of the swamp, half in the shallow water 
and half out, a great bulk lay, like a slumbering moun¬ 
tain. Suddenly it began to move, and slowly and 
clumsily it clambered to its feet and lumbered up the 
bank, the mud sucking and quaking under its awful 
weight. It was a creature more strange and terrible 


With a snort of rage, it leaped upon the stupid and 
terrified giant, and, seizing the great neck between its 
teeth, it crunched through the spinal column. The 
giant crumpled, shook convulsively, and died. Then 
the hunter settled down to a feast. For a long time 
he gorged, then he slept. 

As he slept a tremor shook the mud bank of the 
swamp. The earth quaked and trembled, and the 
spot where the hunter and his victim lay sank and was 


AGO 


For any subject not found in its 


l p h a be tic at place see information 









WHEN MONSTER ATE MONSTER 



Ml i SASKATCffEVVANj MANITOBA j ONTARIO 


NORTH ' 
^DAKOTA 


OMI 


KANS. 




The artist has here pictured the scene where the monster with the long neck and the little head—a huge vegetarian Brontosaur—is about 
to be attacked by another monster, the Allosaur, who made it the business of his life to have certain of his fellow monsters for dinner every 
so often. The Allosaur, as you see, was not so large as its prey, but much quicker in movement. It stood on those great hind legs and 
braced itself with huge tail, as it prepared to spring upon its prey. These two creatures belonged to the great Dinosaur group of reptiles, 
and they lived thousands and thousands of years ago, but their fossil bones have been discovered, and so sharp are the eyes of science that 
from these we are able today to make pictures like this one which show us how they looked and how they lived. 


contained in the Easy 


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133 















|animals, PREHISTORIC 


The Lords of the Air 


covered by an avalanche of mud, engulfing the two, so 
that the hunter lay as dead as his prey. Ages passed, 
millions of years, no one knows how long. The 
swamp was heaved up into a high plateau. Man 
appeared and grew to civilization. 

Where You Can See These Monsters Today 
And then one day the petrified skeletons of the two 
monsters were found, the teeth marks of the hunter 
still in the spine of the victim, and men dug them out 
and marveled at them. For this is no fairy story. 
You can see the two today, or at least their skeletons, 
mounted in the Museum of Natural History in New 


There were many different species of these prehis¬ 
toric monsters, all now given scientific names almost 
as terrifying as they were themselves! There was 
Tyrannosaur, much like Allosaur, but bigger and more 
terrible if possible, and Megalosaur, a near relative. 
These were meat-eating. Among those which fed on 
vegetable matter were Diplodocus, who might have 
been a brother of Brontosaur except that he was bigger 
yet, being 87 feet long; Trachodon, who had a wide 
snout like a duck-bill and 2,000 teeth in his mouth; 
Iguanodon, whose tail was flat so that it could be used 
for swimming; Stegosaur, who had as much armor as 


THE MONSTER WITH THREE HORNS 



This is another one of the Dinosaur group, known as Triceratops, on account of his three horns, the name being from two Greek 
words meaning “three-horned.” Two of the horns you can plainly see in the skeleton. The third was shorter and grew out of 
the end of his nose, as shown in the picture on the opposite page. 


York City, just as they may have been when the 
hunter held his feast. 

These two creatures belonged to the family of 
Dinosauria, the largest land animals that have ever 
lived. The giant was called Brontosaur, and the 
hunter Allosaur. They were reptiles, and though 
they have no very near relatives living today, they 
were related to the crocodile, and, strange to say, to 
the birds. For it seems certain that the birds devel¬ 
oped from some early reptile. 

Like the reptiles of today these huge beasts were 
probably cold-blooded, and it is supposed that they 
laid eggs. They were extremely stupid for all their 
strength, and even Allosaur could hardly make a living 
were he alive today when animals are quicker and 
more intelligent. But in the “age of reptiles” they 
were lords of the earth, and they ranged over Europe, 
North and South America, Africa, Australia, and 
Madagascar. 


a small warship, with great plates that stuck up from 
his spine and heavy spikes on the end of his tail; 
Triceratops, perhaps the weirdest beast of them all, 
with an enormous head which with its neck-frill of 
bone was eight feet long, and had three horns on its 
face. The smallest of them was about the size of a 
cat, and Diplodocus, with his 87 feet of length, was 
the largest. 

The Dinosaurs were land animals, but in that age 
the sea and air also had their monsters. In the air the 
Pterodactyls were lords. They were reptiles too, and 
curious creatures they must have been! The smallest 
ones, which were also the earliest, had a body not 
much larger than a sparrow’s, though the spread of 
wings was greater. From this the Pterodactyls 
ranged in size to Pteranodon, the largest creature that 
has ever flown. The earlier species had teeth, but 
these great flying lizards had no teeth, but instead a 
very long dagger-like beak. 


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MR. TRICERATOPS IN HIS NATIVE WILDS 



Here, thanks to the magic of the artist’s brush, the picturesque creature with the three-horned face has come back to life and we see him 
in his native wilds in Wyoming. In his day Wyoming had a tropical climate, with tropical vegetation such as you see here. Note how the 
big bone collar stood up on the neck of this 25-foot reptile. It protected him in his quarrels with others of his family, for although the 

Triceratops was a vegetarian, as shown by his teeth, the males fought each other. 


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135 


10 or k 














































Ianimals,prehistoric 


1 \ Then the Reptiles Passed Away ) 



America. Huge mountain ranges rose, and many of 
the swamps were raised into high and dry plateaus; and 
the climate grew colder and the vegetation changed in 
character. The Dinosaurs and the other reptiles, 
being cold-blooded and feeding on tropical vegeta¬ 
tion, could probably not adapt themselves to this 
new mode of life and so died. Thus the way was left 


WHEN NATURE WAS PUTTING IN HER COAL SUPPLY 


The Oddest of All Flyers 

Pteranodon was so curious looking that one would 
almost have to see him to believe in him! He had a 
spread of wing of over 20 feet, a small stumpy body 
which probably did not weigh more than 25 or 30 
pounds, an enormously long skull from the back 
of which protruded a long bony crest—the skull 
with the crest was nearly four 
feet long—and huge batlike wings 
composed not of feathers, but of a 
membrane or skin, that stretched 
from his legs to his body and was 
supported by his little finger- 
bone, which was two feet long. 

He had no tail, and in flying he 
apparently steered with the crest 
of his head and his legs. 

On the wing, the Pterodactyls 
must have been very agile, but on 
land Pteranodon must have been 
quite unable to move, and prob¬ 
ably rested hanging batlike from 
the cliff by his fingers and toes. 

It is supposed that they laid eggs, 
and small eggs at that. Their 
food was fish and probably small 
flying things. They had no 
feathers, and were probably scaly 
like the other reptiles. 

Strange Creatures of the Sea 

The sea sheltered equally 
strange creatures in this Mesozoic 
age. Ichthyosaurus, who accord¬ 
ing to the limerick “fainted with 
shame when he first heard his 
name, and departed a long time 
before us,” is perhaps the best 
known genus. The Ichthyosaurs 
looked not unlike whales, though 
they were really reptiles and their 
inner structure is quite different 
from these mammals. Their 
bodies were round and tapering, 
their heads large with long snouts 
and very short necks, their limbs 
had turned into small paddles, 
and they had a tail with two 
points, the spine extending into 
the lower point. They brought 
forth their young alive, for a 
specimen has been found contain¬ 
ing bones of several young. 

When full grown they were some¬ 
times 40 feet long. 

Just what caused the end of all 
the weird reptiles of the Mesozoic 
age is not exactly known. But at 

the end of this age great upheavals , hc age „ he „ lfce 0 , ^ fe „ s „ hlch „ UtwM ^ tot<> 

01 land LOOK place in many parts what is now the temperate zone was very hot—tropical, in fact—and the monsters who 
of thp world psnprinllv North dearly loved hot weather, wereMust in their element, as you see by the example of the two 
OI uie world, especially IN ortn creatures who are swimming about in this pool in one of the great carboniferous swamps. 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

136 









Here are three of the strangest monsters that ever lived. The one at the top is called the Stegosaur. The bony plates on his back protected 
him against the deadly leap of the flesh-eating Dinosaurs, while the sharp spines on his powerful tail were probably used to slash the foes 
that crept upon him from behind. The creature in the middle belongs to the Ceratopsia group—an ancestor of the Triceratops, shown in 
the earlier pictures, who had not yet developed the two long horns on his forehead. At the bottom is one of the carnivorous Dinosaurs 

killing and eating one of his smaller cousins. 

contained in the E a * y Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

137 











































ANIMALS,PREHISTORIC 



An Early Bird, Indeed! 



clear for the development of the 
next great series of animals, the 
mammals. 

Although these monster 
reptiles are perhaps the 
most startling creatures that 
ever lived, the remains of 
countless animals which ex¬ 
isted before them and after 
them in prehistoric times 
have been dug out of the 
earth (see Fossils; Mam¬ 
moth and Mastodon). 

One of the most strik¬ 
ing things in the review 
of these remains is that 
nature seems to have 
tried out nearly all types 
of animals in nearly all 
sizes from pigmies to 
giants. Thus a dwarf 
elephant has been found 
no bigger than a dog, 
and a giant dormouse 
larger than a cat. Re¬ 
mains of beavers as big 
as bears have been dis¬ 
covered, and sloths 18 to 20 feet long have been 
found. Fossil dragon-flies measuring two feet across 


the wings have been dug 
out of the coal beds of 
France. The rhinoceros 
group seems to have been 
one of the favorite types for 
experiment, for some had 
no horns at all, some had 
as many as four and five, 
others had tusks like the 
walrus. Tusks and horns 
were indeed distributed 
freely by nature in bygone 
days, remains of even such 
animals as gophers having 
been found with horned 
noses. 

Among the most interest¬ 
ing fossil discoveries is that 
of the primitive bird called 
Archaeopteryx, which is 
clearly a connecting link 
with the reptiles. About 
the size of a crow, 
it had no beak, 
but its long jaws 
were armed with 
teeth. Unlike all 
living birds, it had three sharp-clawed fingers on each 
wing, and a long bony feathered tail. 


This picture shows you how 
the monsters whose skele¬ 
tons we see in museums are 
restored—the missing por- 
'tions of the bones being 
modeled in plaster. The 
artist is here at work on 
the skull of a duck-billed 
Dinosaur. Long and careful 
study is necessary before the 
scientist attempts to rebuild 
these ancient skeletons. 



It is in this shape that the bones of prehistoric animals arrive at the great museums, such as that of the American Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory in New York, in which this picture was taken. The bones are imbedded in rock because the mud in which the carcasses of dead 
monsters were originally buried has turned, in the course of the ages, into stone. The stone is carefully chiseled away—you notice that the 
man on the left is working with a chisel—and then the expert who has spent his life studying thousands of such fossils looks over the bones 

carefully and decides to what ancient creature they belonged. 


For any subject 


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ANNAPOLIS 


ANT 



A.NNAPOLIS, Md. The quaint capital of Maryland 
is on the Severn, about two miles from its entrance 
into Chesapeake Bay. It was named after Princess 
(later Queen) Anne of England. Settled in 1649 by 
Puritan exiles from Virginia, it was noted in colonial 
days for its social and intellectual life. The United 
States Congress was in session in the tall-domed 
State House from November 1783 to June 1784. 
Here, on Dec. 23, 1783, Washington resigned his 
commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental 
Army; and here, a year afterward, the treaty of peace 
with England was ratified. Annapolis has been the 
seat of the Naval Academy since 1845 (see Naval 
Academy). Population, about 9,000. 

Anne, Queen of England (1665-1714). What 
pictures of stately, dignified, quick-witted womanhood 
the word “Queen” brings to mind! Unfortunately 
Anne, who was the last of the Stuart rulers of Eng¬ 
land, falls far short of our pictured ideal. She was 
so dull, slow, and obstinate, that it has been said that 
there was “only one person in the kingdom more 
stupid than she—and that was her husband, Prince 
George of Denmark.” Queen Anne was, however, 
pious and good-hearted; she served the state to the 
best of her ability and undoubtedly deserves the title 


of “Good Queen Anne.” But she had strong prej¬ 
udices and was easily influenced by her friends. 
John Churchill, who rose to be Duke of Marlborough 
and commanded the English armies in the victory 
at Blenheim, and his beautiful but imperious wife 
Sarah Jennings, were among Anne’s intimate advisers 
during the first part of her reign. 

Anne was the daughter of James II, against whom 
she supported William of Orange when he came to 
the throne of England as a result of the “Glorious 
Revolution” of 1688. She succeeded her brother-in- 
law William in 1702. Her reign (1702-1714) was 
marked by the War of the Spanish Succession, which 
brought an important increase in British seapower, 
by the parliamentary union of England and Scotland 
(1707), and by the activities of such brilliant writers 
as Addison, Pope, Dryden, Swift, and Defoe. 

Anne was a devout Protestant while her exiled 
father and his son the Pretender were both ardent 
Catholics. In her reign a law was passed providing 
that the crown of England, after her death without 
direct heirs, should pass to the nearest Protestant 
branch of the Stuart family. It was this Act of 
Succession which brought King George I of the 
Hanoverian line to the British throne in 1714. 


The MARVELS HIDDEN in an ANT-HILL 


'T'HE great naturalist Linnaeus once said: “Nature is most marvelous in the smallest of 
-*■ her creatures.” The more we study the ways of the ant,—and we still have much to learn 
—the better we understand what Linnaeus meant. Ants live in highly organized communities. 
They are builders and miners, farmers and warriors and slave-holders. They keep herds of 
“cows”—still tinier insects, the aphids—which they milk skilfully to obtain one of their favorite 
foods. They can distinguish friend from foe almost instantly, and have mysterious ways of 
passing news from one to another. They tend their young with great care and devotion. 


\ NT. The life story of the ant reads 
like a fairy tale. So wonderful 
is the way in which ants live together 
in colonies, so intelligent are their 
methods of building their homes, 
dividing their labors, obtaining food, 
and conducting their wars, that some 
observers have thought that these 
insects actually are able to reason. 

Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 
a great scientist who spent years 
studying the ants, said: “It is 
difficult altogether to deny them the 
gift of reason. Their mental powers 
differ from those of men not so much 
in kind as in degree.” 

There are more than 2,000 species 
of these amazing little insects, of 
which about 200 are found in the 
United States. The most common 
are the red ants and black ants, which 
you so often see—slender-waisted little creatures with 
six legs and two long slender antennae, which are 



l, . 

Yes, she just rose from her slumbers a 
few moments ago, and is making her 
toilet; not, however, doing up her back 
hair, but the next thing to it—for she is 
combing her antennae, to clean them. 


constantly waving to and fro as the 
ants move about. Their bodies are 
divided into three very distinct 
regions: head, thorax, and abdomen. 
The head bears the antennae or 
feelers, by which the ant smells and 
feels its way about, recognizes and 
communicates with other ants, and 
finds its food. It also bears power¬ 
ful jaws for biting and carrying 
objects, and eyes sufficiently devel¬ 
oped to recognize light and darkness, 
although some ants are blind. Some 
ants also have stings from which 
they eject a powerful poison called 
formic acid. 

All ants are social insects, that is, 
they live together in large groups— 
sometimes hundreds of thousands— 
like the bees. These communities are 
much like little nations, with their 
queens, their winged males and females, and their 
wingless workers and nurses. In some colonies the 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

139 













On the left is a picture of a black ant’s nest which has been uncovered to show the chambers and passages in the wonderful little apartment 
house underground. On the right are queens with their wings on; so you may be sure that they have not yet gone to housekeeping and 

settled down to the cares of family life. 


workers are divided into large and small workers and 
soldiers. The soldiers have large heads and more power¬ 
ful jaws and protect the home colony against its foes. 

The Ant Colony and Its Queen 
An ant colony is started by a single female which 
leaves the parent 
community at the 
swarming time, and 
lays her eggs which 
hatch into maggots 
similar to fly mag¬ 
gots. She feeds the 
young ants or larvae 
from her own body 
until they spin their 
cocoons and pass 
into the pupa stage, 
from which they 
emerge after several 
weeks. These 
worker ants now 
take over the duties 
of the colony and 
wait on the queen, 
so that she can 
spend all her time in 
egg-laying. Since 
this first brood of 
ants has been very 
poorly fed, it is 
smaller in size than 
the later broods, 
which are abund¬ 
antly fed and tended 
by their small older brothers and sisters. If you 
watch an ant-nest carefully you can often see the 
workers carrying the tiny maggot-like larvae and the 
cocoons of the pupae out into the sun to hasten their 
growth, and then back to the underground chambers. 


After the queen ant has produced a large number of 
workers, she at last lays eggs which hatch into a brood 
of males and females with wings. These are tended 
and fed with the utmost care by the workers, until 
they are ready for the marriage flight some sultry 

day. In places where 
there are many ant 
colonies they come 
out in myriads and 
fill the air. After 
the wedding flight, 
the females enter the 
ground to make new 
nests and form new 
colonies, except for 
those who are cap¬ 
tured by the workers 
and dragged back to 
their old homes to 
replenish the parent 
colony. Having no 
more use for their 
wings, the females 
pluck them off, and 
spend their remain¬ 
ing life—which may 
beas long as 17 years 
— underground. 
But the unhappy 
winged males have 
no such long life 
ahead of them. 
Their work is done, 
and the industrious 
workers have no more use for them. They are not 
allowed to return to the parent colony, from which 
they emerged for their few brief hours of glory, and 
soon fall prey to birds or spiders or perish in some 
other way. The law of ant life is inexorable: Work or 


THE QUEEN AND HER LADIES-IN-WAITING 



Of course you know that’s the queen in the center, but what do you suppose that 
little lady-in-waiting is doing to Her Majesty? Perhaps she’s giving her a pinch 
to remind her that there is no use of her trying to get away; for the queen is only 
a limited monarch after all and is kept closely confined by her bodyguard in the nest. 


For any t u bject 


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140 









Milking Honey from “Cows” 



die. In some colonies the workers kill the old mem¬ 
bers as soon as they become too feeble to work. 

For their nests or formicaries, many kinds of ants 
build marvelously complicated structures. Most nests 
are many-storied labyrinths of galleries and chambers, 
extending for several feet or even yards underground. 
The mound-building or mason ants rear great struc¬ 
tures sometimes 3 feet high and 12 feet in diameter. 
Other ants are carpenters, cutting long tunnels and 
galleries in dead trees, while some pile up great heaps 
of leaves and twigs to build their homes. Some of 


THEY’RE ALL MAKING THEIR TOILETS 



Here are a number of other ants engaged in making their toilets, 
just as the ant is doing on page 139. But while that ant is cleaning 
her antennae, two of the ants here shown are cleaning their legs 
and stinging organs, while the third is cleansing its abdomen 
with four of its legs while hanging by the other two. 

the chambers in these complicated colonies are used 
for sleeping during the winter, others are used as 
nurseries for the larvae, and as storerooms for food 
and stables for their “cattle”—the aphids or plant 
lice (see Aphids). 

Ants eat many kinds of animal and vegetable food, 
but they like nothing better than the honey produced 
by the plant lice or aphids. Since the aphids are soft 
defenseless little creatures, an easy prey for other 
insects, the shrewd ants take various measures to 
protect them. Sometimes they carry the aphids into 
their colonies and feed them there on the food they 
like best. More often the ants guard small groups 
of the plant lice, protecting them from their foes, 
carrying them from withered plants to fresh vigorous 
plants, and from one sort of plant to another kind 
more favorable to their honey-making. 


THE PARASOL ANTS 



This is a procession of so-called “parasol” ants carrying leaves on 
their way to their underground homes. They are not carrying the 
leaves as parasols at all, but are taking them to their gardens for 
use in raising mushrooms, as explained in the text. 


contained in the Easy 


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OUCH! OH, THOSE TERRIBLE DRIVER ANTS! 



Can you imagine it! Not only the timid antelopes, but the powerful elephant and the horned rhinoceros and the tiger and the terrible gorilla, 
are crashing their way through the jungle as fast as they can, fleeing—from what do you suppose?—a little bit of a creature no longer than 
your thumb nail—the driver ant! They are undoubtedly making for the water to drown their savage and remorseless enemies. It’s the 

only thing they can do, you see. 


Some South American species of ants form “mush¬ 
room gardens” in their chambers below the ground, 
cutting and carrying to these special quarters large 
quantities of leaves. These leaves 
soon become a fertile field for a 
mold or fungus which the ants then 
make their only food. Others gather 
large stores of grains. Some species 
gather honey from flowers, which is 
preserved in a remarkable fashion. 

Some of the workers remain within 
the nest, suspended by their feet from 
the roof of the chamber, while other 
workers forage for honey and pour 
it into the mouths of these living 
“honey pots.” From time to time 
the “nurse” workers draw out from 
them the supplies to feed the young. 

Other habits are equally remarkable. 

In some hot countries, like the 
central parts of Africa, South America, and southern 
Asia, there are species of ants which are flesh eating, 
and which capture live creatures for food. In West 
Africa these ants are called driver ants. Such ants are 
very much feared, for they hunt in long columns of mil¬ 
lions of individuals and are as savage as tigers. The 
largest and fiercest animals are helpless before them 
and perish under the millions of bites, unless they can 


flee to water and drown their tormentors. Animals 
confined in pens will be killed and devoured in a few 
hours. In Africa when a swarm is seen approaching, 
the people all leave their houses and 
let the ants clear out any insects 
which they may find there, as well as 
the rats and mice. 

Some kinds of ants, like the Ama¬ 
zon or warrior ants, actually keep 
slaves. They go out in great armies 
on expeditions against smaller kinds 
of ants, drive them out of their nests, 
and carry off their eggs and larvae 
and pupae to their own nests, as well 
as their stores of food. The captured 
eggs, larvae, and pupae are carefully 
tended, and when they grow into ants 
they are made to work for their 
captors. Some of the robber-ant com¬ 
munities do no work at all for them¬ 
selves, and live wholly on the food captured from other 
colonies and collected by their slaves. They thus 
become so helpless that if their slaves are taken away 
they perish miserably. In a robber-ant community the 
soldiers are of two sorts, large and small, and on the 
march the small soldiers are drawn up in a long narrow 
column, while the large soldiers are scattered along 
both sides and appear to act as sentinels and officers. 


A FRIEND IN NEED 



This shows a little group of worker ants 
drawing rations of honey dew, as it is 
called, from an ant that has been milk¬ 
ing one of the aphids, or ant cows, and 
has more than she can comfortably 
carry in her own stomach. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

142 








♦ 


How to Study Ants 



ANT 


SKY-SCRAPERS OF THE TERMITE WORLD 



While the homes of all ant communities are very remarkable in their architecture and their domestic economy, none are quite so striking 
in some respects as the hills of the termites, or so-called white ants. This picture shows a cross-section of one of these sky-scrapers 
of the termite world. The divisions of the structure are here made more precise than they really are, so that the architecture, the pro¬ 
visions for ventilation, and the like, may be more clearly understood. As the text tells you, these sky-scrapers are sometimes 25 feet 
high; this picture of the native African beside one of them enables you to get a good idea of its size. But more remarkable than its size 
—which is wonderful enough, when you think what little creatures made it—is the skill in architecture and domestic engineering shown 
in its building. Near the roof, you see, is the nursery. Ventilation is so important that the entire cupola is devoted to that purpose, 
and on either side are also ventilating spaces admitting fresh air from the outside. Below the nursery and between the supporting 
pillars are additional stores of fresh air. At the very bottom is the royal chamber of the king and queen, while around it are the quarters 
of the termites who spend their lives as the royal body servants. With so many mouths to feed—there are often more than 2,000 resi¬ 
dents in one of these structures—there must be large supplies of food in the larder, and you see plenty of storage space has been pro¬ 
vided. In wet weather all this food would be spoiled, like the good things in a flooded cellar, if these wonderful little people hadn’t 

thought about drainage. But you see they did! 


The Dreaded Termites of the Tropics 
The so-called “white ants,” which are so much 
dreaded in hot countries for their ravages, are not true 
ants and are rarely white, so they should be called by 
their proper name, termites. They are larger than 
ants and have terrible jaws, which enable them to bite 
through clothing and inflict a painful wound. Like 
the true ants the termites live in colonies, with kings 
and queens, workers and soldiers; and they build 
enormous domed mud dwellings, sometimes 25 feet 
high and so strong that they will support the weight 
of cattle. The queen termite grows to huge size, 
often five or six inches long, while the average size of 
the others is from half to three-quarters of an inch. 
The termites are especially fond of woody matter, 

contained in the Easy Ref ere nee 


and in the tropics they do great damage by gnawing 
out the interior of wooden furniture, door and window 
sills, and other objects of wood, leaving only the 
outside shell. 

Anyone who washes to study the fascinating habits 
of ants may do so with little trouble at home. Take 
a round jar made of clear glass, fill it three-quarters 
full of moist earth gathered from a field or garden. 
Make a cylinder of thick dark paper which will fit 
snugly around the jar to the height of the earth inside. 
This must be of such diameter that when you hold the 
jar by the top the paper tube will easily slide up and 
down the jar. 

Now find an ant colony and capture as many ants 
as possible, taking care not to injure them. Dig out 

Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

143 













♦ 



S-AKEftl CA 


South pole 


SOUTH VICTORIA 
LANO 


KING EDWARD VH 
LAND 


4 tASWAWA 


THE VAST ANTARCTIC CONTINENT AT THE SOUTH POLE 


SOUTH AFRICA 


500 to 


looo 


Fathoms 


Kerguelen / 


AUSTRALIA 


The South Pole lies at the heart of a huge desolate ice-capped continent as large as Australia, in contrast to the North Polar regions, which 
are a wide shallow hollow in the earth’s surface filled with the ice and waters of the Arctic Ocean. Behind the walls of ice that everywhere 
encompass the Antarctic continent, the rocky shores rise in most places to sheer heights of 4,000 feet, while the center of the continent is a 
plateau 10,000 feet above sea-level. Notice that although the tip of South America is much nearer to Antarctica than South Africa or New 
Zealand, the route taken by Scott and other explorers was from the New Zealand side. This is because the Ross Sea there cuts deep into 

the continent, greatly shortening the land distance to the Pole. 


For any subject 


not found in it s alphabetical pi ace see information 


144 














ANT-EATER 


Jantarctic CONTINENT 


their nest and get their grubs and cocoons, and if 
possible capture a queen ant, easily recognized by her 
greater size. Carry your prisoners home and put 
them in the jar with the earth. If a fruit jar is used 
do not put on the lid; the top should be covered with 
paper, into which small holes have been punched with 
a pin to let in the air. If the jar is left in the sunlight 
and not disturbed, the ants will at once start building 
a new home, tunneling particularly along the sides of 
the jar. From time to time food should be placed 
in the jar—a little sugar, small bits of cooked meat, 
dead flies, etc.,—and a few drops of water should be 
sprinkled over the earth from time to time to keep 
it moist. 

After a week or so, draw off the paper cylinder. 
You will be amazed to discover a network of tunnels, 
plainly visible alongside the glass, through which ants 
are hurrying about their work. Do not leave them 
exposed to the light too long or the ants will burrow 
out of sight into the center of the jar. 

Ants ( Formicidae ) belong to the order Hymenoptera, 
which also includes the bees and the wasps. The 
common black ant of the United States is the Mono- 
morium minutum; the little red ant, sometimes called 
Pharaoh’s ant, which infests houses, is the Mono- 
moriurn pharaonis. The common “white ant” found 
in eastern parts of the United States is the Termes 
flavipes. 

Antarctic continent. Who would have 
imagined a few decades ago that there remained 
another great continent to be discovered? Who would 
have dreamed that the ice-bound waters of the Great 
Southern Ocean surround an island-continent as large 
as Australia? Here and there explorers had come 
upon land in these unknown waters, but geographers 
generally believed that these lands were islands. They 
pictured the South Polar regions, like the North 
Polar regions, as a vast expanse of frozen sea, holding 
in its icy grip a few scattered islands and archipelagoes. 

Today, thanks to the fearless labors of recent 
explorers,—some of whom perished dauntless at their 
task—we know that the South Pole lies almost at the 
center of a circular continent which stretches away in 
every direction nearly to or beyond the Antarctic Circle. 

A Land of Desolation 

No other region on earth is like this desolate ice- 
capped land of Antarctica. Howling gales which 
blow so hard that a man can hardly stand against them 
perpetually sweep down from the Pole and make the 
land uninhabitable except for the few hardy sea¬ 
birds and sea-animals that visit its shores. Penguins, 
petrels, and a few other Antarctic birds nest on its 
sun-exposed cliffs in summer. Seals, sea-lions, and 
sea-elephants occasionally emerge from its waters to 
rest on the fringes of ice that surround it. But the 
interior of Antarctica is a land of death. There are 
no land-mammals—no polar bears, no foxes, no 
wolves, no hares. And only the hardiest plants, such 
as mosses, lichens, and hepaticas, cling during the 
brief summer to the few exposed bits of soil and rock. 


For nearly its whole extent the continent is covered 
with a prodigious sheet of ice, 2,000 feet thick in 
places, which has existed since a time before the first 
man of the old Stone Age appeared on earth, in the 
long distant past. Many fearful chasms split this 
ice-cap, sometimes covered over by a treacherous 
coat of thinner ice and snow, thus luring unwary 
explorers to a living tomb. The shores in most places 
rise precipitously some 4,000 feet from the ice belt 
that everywhere encompasses it, and in the interior 
gigantic mountains thrust their icy masses high into 
the air. The whole central plateau, in the midst of 
which lies the South Pole, is more than 10,000 feet 
above the sea, and it is surrounded by a chain of 
peaks rising to 15,000 feet or more—higher than any 
mountain in the United States south of Alaska. 

Approach to the shores of the continent is every¬ 
where made difficult by a wide belt of frozen ocean. 
In summer this breaks up into floating pack ice 
which often extends for hundreds of miles from land. 
Through this pack ice the stout ships of the explorers 
must buffet their way for days before reaching the 
towering ramparts of everlasting ice which girdle the 
whole continent. In many places this gigantic ice 
barrier rises far above the masts of the tallest ships. 
In other places it is so far worn down that it is used 
as a convenient dock alongside of which explorers 
moor their vessels. 

An Ice Wall 400 Miles Long 

Between Victoria Land and King Edward VII Land, 
on the side nearest New Zealand, the coast is broken 
by a great gulf larger than the states of New York 
and Pennsylvania. Here the Great Ice Barrier, or 
the Ross Ice Cap as it was named in honor of its 
discoverer, rises from the ocean in an unbroken series 
of cliffs from 100 to 400 feet high and extending for 
nearly 400 miles. For days and days intrepid 
explorers sailed along this forbidding barrier before 
they found a place where landing was possible. 
Nevertheless, because the distance to the Pole is less 
here than elsewhere, the Great Ice Barrier has been 
made the starting point for all expeditions into the 
inhospitable heart of the continent. 

The enthralling story of how parts of this frozen 
continent were explored, and how the Swedish 
scientist Amundsen and the English Captain Scott 
reached the South Pole, is told in the articles on 
Polar Exploration, and Scott, Robert Falcon. 

From the tip of South America to the nearest known part 
of the Antarctic Continent the distance is 500 miles; from 
New Zealand, 1,600 miles; from Australia, 2,000 miles; from 
South Africa, 2,300 miles. 

Ant-eater. This toothless mammal is found 
chiefly in Central and South America, where it feeds 
on white ants and other insects. The long flexible 
tongue, covered with sticky saliva, is protruded among 
the insects and suddenly withdrawn when a number 
have collected upon it. There are a number of 
species. One species, the aardvark or earth-pig, is 
found only in South Africa. The great ant-eater is 
about four feet long with a large plumelike tail 


contained in the E a ay 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hit 

145 


u> or k 







ANT-EATER 


ANTHONY 


covered with bushy hair. The color is 
gray, marked by a band of black on 
the breast and toward the shoulders; 
the feet and forelegs are white. The 
claws are long and strong, adapted for 
digging open the ant’s nest. It sleeps 
a great deal and lies curled up with its 
tail spread out to protect it from sun 
and rain. In defending itself it makes 
good use of its strong forearms. 
Antelope. These widely 
distributed animals belong 
like the deer to a group 
between cattle and goats, 



The Great Ant- 
Eater on the ground 
is rooting about in 
the New York Zoo 
for unwary insects 
to pick up on the 
tip of his long flexi¬ 
ble tongue. This is 
one of the times 
when he didn’t hap¬ 
pen to be asleep, 
with his big bushy 
tail spread out. His 
smaller cousin, 
known as the 
Lesser Ant-Eater 
or the Tamandua, 
has climbed as high 
as he could, from 
force of habit, for in 
his native jungles 
he lives in the 
trees. Note the 
long monkey-like 
tail that aids him 
in climbing. 


and are the fleetest as well as the most beautiful 
and graceful of quadrupeds. On the deserts of Cen¬ 
tral Asia antelopes have been known to attain a speed 
estimated at 60 miles an hour, easily distancing an 
automobile going 40 miles an hour. Their horns, un¬ 
like those of the deer family, are ringed and hollow and 
are not renewed annually. The different types vary 
greatly in size, the pygmy antelopes of South Africa 
being only eight or nine inches in height, while the 
largest kinds are from five to six feet. Antelopes are 
found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as America. 

Two kinds are peculiar to North America—the 
Rocky Mountain goat and the 'pronghorn. The former 
as a rule is found in the mountains just above the 
timber-line, in high inaccessible spots where only 
the boldest hunter can follow. In appearance it is 
clumsy, but it is remarkably agile and is an expert 
in climbing rocks and icy steeps. Its weight is about 
that of the common deer. The body is thick-set, 
legs stocky, hind-quarters low, shoulders high, head 
carried low. The dense coat is all yellowish white, 
the hair next to the skin being fine and the outer 
hair long and coarse. The Indians used to make 
blankets of the long silky hair. The horns are small, 
black, smooth, and sharp-pointed. It is found spar¬ 
ingly in Alaska and British Columbia, in Idaho, 
Montana, and Washington, but the well-beaten 
trails tell of great numbers that once existed. 

The pronghorn, on the contrary, is a plains antelope, 
though it stands apart from the true antelopes owing 
to the fact that it sheds the outer sheath of its horns 
annually; there is an interior bony core, however, that 
remains permanent. The pronghorn ranges from the 
Mississippi River to the Pacific and from a little north 


of the Canadian boundary 
southward into Mexico. Atone 
time there were immense herds 
in the San Joaquin Valley in 
California and the species is 
still abundant in northwestern 
Mexico. The pronghorn stands 
about three feet high at the 
shoulder and is of a bright fawn 
color marked with white. 

The common antelope found 
in India and Eastern Asia is 
about 2Vz feet high at the 
shoulders, with erect diverging 
horns bent in a spiral form. 
It is so swift that greyhounds 
cannot catch it, and it leaps 
easily a height of 10 or 12 feet, 
while the length of its bound 
is often 10 or 12 yards. The 
Chinese antelope is found in 
the deserts of Central Asia. 
Its flesh is very much prized. 
The gazelle of North Africa 
was known to the ancients, its 
beautiful black eyes being often 
spoken of by Arabian poets. In the Alps we find the 
chamois and in South Africa the eland, the largest 
of all antelopes. The springbok or springbuck, a 
species found in Africa, gets its name from the great 
leaps that it makes. Other members of the antelope 
family are the gnu, with its curiously twisted horns, 
the reedbuck, the waterbuck, the steinbok, all natives 
of Africa, and the Indian nilgai. 

Scientific name of the pronghorn, Antilocapra americana; 
of Rocky Mountain goat, Mazama montana; of the common 
antelope or blackbuck of India, Antilope cervicapra; of the 
common gazelle, Gazella dorcas. 

ANTHONY ( dn’to-ny ), Susan Brownell (1820-1906). 
During the 1854 session of the New York State 
legislature, a school teacher appeared in Albany to 
present a petition signed by 28,000 persons for better 
laws to regulate the liquor traffic. A member of the 
Assembly said, “Who are all these signers? Nobody 
but women.” Nobody but women—mothers, wives, 
daughters, sisters who wanted to protect their pro¬ 
tectors against evil habits that threatened the home! 
The teacher as she turned away said: “A woman’s 
name on a petition will never be as good as a man’s 
until she has a vote.” 

From that day Susan B. Anthony—for that was 
this teacher’s name—was a woman suffragist. For 
the next half century she gave every day, every 
dollar, every power of her mind to the work of im¬ 
proving the position of women, and especially to the 
work of winning for them the right to vote. 

Miss Anthony was first awakened to the injustices 
which handicapped the women of her day when she 
began to teach for $10 a month in a position for which 
a man would have been given $40. Her voice was 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

146 







The Pronghorn antelope of the 
American plains and a baby 
Pronghorn. Usually horns are 
present only in the males, al¬ 
though sometimes well developed 
in the females. The fawn, who 
was born in the spring, will 
k begin to develop horns about 
% the middle of summer. 


Roan, or Sable antelope, a native of 
Africa. The neck is covered with a dis¬ 
tinct mane, the tail is rather short and 
has a tuft at the tip. The females have 
horns, but they are much smaller than 
those of the males. 


This is the Red Waterbuck 
which lives in Southern and 
Eastern Africa. It stands about 
3 feet at the withers, and its 
horns average about 28 inches 
long, although they may reach 
3 feet. He wears a long coarse 
grayish roan coat. 




The Nilgai is the largest 
of the antelopes of India. 

Only the males are horned. 

^ The tail is tufted and the throat 
of the male has a small tuft of 
hair. The Nilgai is peculiar in 
having the forelimbs longer 
than the hind pair. The color is dark 
gray with a bluish tinge. Nilgai is Indian 
for “Blue Bull.” 


Blackbuck, or Indian antelope. It is 
the sole representative of its genus. 
Stands about 32 inches at the shoulder 
and has a short compressed tail. The 
horns are spiral, and the turns vary from 
three to five. 


The little Dorcas 
gazelle stands only 
about 24 inches at 
the shoulder, but, 
my, how it can run! 
It skims the ground 
like a bird. It is 
found in the deserts 
of Egypt, Algeria, 
Syria, Palestine, 
and parts of Asia 
Minor. 


This is the doe of the 
Blackbuck family. As you 
see, she has no horns; al¬ 
though some occasionally 
do have very small ones. 
Both the does and young 
bucks are yellowish fawn 
on the outer sides of the 
limbs and white on the 
under parts. 


The Rocky Mountain goat, although 
he looks so unlike an antelope, belongs 
to the antelope family. He is found in 
the mountains of western North 
America. 


MEMBERS OF THE FLEET-FOOTED ANTELOPE FAMILY 













THE BRAVE BATTLE FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS 




A 1 .4 w iMA A >'*• 

i ’v Jw ^ a 





. ■'v'SHf 



i mmmmJSm - ^ 

B *- ■ -a ' 







Here we see Miss Anthony, who was one of the first to raise her voice for “Votes for Women,” struggling to obtain the right to speak in 
a state teachers’ association of which she was a member and two-thirds of whose members were women. Only after a half-hour of hot 
discussion was her right conceded by the men. In temperance meetings and other similar gatherings there was at that time the same attempt 
to “gag” women and prevent their having any part in public affairs. The presiding officer in this picture, who appears so fine in full dress 
blue coat with brass buttons, was Dr. Charles Davies, professor of mathematics in West Point Military Academy. 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

148 




























ANTIETAM 


ANTHROPOLOGY 


heard at a meeting of the New York State Teachers’ 
Association in a demand for equal pay for men and 
women. In 1851 she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
and this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship 
and a united struggle for women’s rights. At first 
they organized conventions in the interest of the tem¬ 
perance movement, but they soon became convinced 
—by the experience narrated above—that women 
must have the vote in order to make their efforts 
count. In 1869 Miss Anthony helped to organize the 
American Woman Suffrage Association, of which Mrs. 
Stanton was elected president, while she herself be¬ 
came chairman of the executive committee. In 1890, 
after this organization had united with the Woman 
Suffrage Association, under the name of the National 
American Woman Suffrage Association, Miss Anthony 
was elected vice-president-at-large. In 1892 she 
followed Mrs. Stanton as president, holding this office 
until the age of 80; she then resigned and was 
succeeded by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. 

In 1872 Miss Anthony voted in the presidential 
election to test her status as a citizen. For this act 
she was tried before the courts of New York state 
and fined $100, but refused to pay it, declaring that 
“taxation without representation is tyranny,” just 
the same as it was a hundred years before. 

As the most original and aggressive of all the leaders 
in the suffrage movement, Miss Anthony was singled 
out for ridicule. But there are few today who will 
deny the debt that women owe to her for their 
privilege of working at almost any occupation, for 
their right to control their own property and children, 
for their opportunities for higher education, and for 
the ballot. When the Woman Suffrage Amendment 
to the Federal Constitution was submitted by 
Congress in 1919, it was in the language of Miss 
Anthony and it is known as the “Anthony Amend¬ 
ment.” (See Women’s Rights.) 

Anthropology. The name of this science is 
derived from the Greek anthropos, meaning “man,” 
and logos, meaning “science.” In its widest meaning, 
therefore, the science of anthropology covers the 
entire field of man’s history—his physical structure, 
his habits and customs, his language, his arts, re¬ 
ligions, and material civilization, and his distribution 
over the face of the earth. In this sense anatomy 
and physiology, psychology, ethics, and sociology, 
and a score of other subjects are closely associated 
with anthropology. But for practical purposes, an¬ 
thropology has been limited to a much narrower field. 

Man’s place in nature or the zoology of man is the 
first problem of anthropology. What are the bodily 
characteristics that distinguish man from monkeys 
and other animals, and are responsible for his habit 
of standing on his hind legs and for his other peculiar¬ 
ities? How does the skull of man compare with that 
of a chimpanzee? Questions such as these are asked 
by anthropologists in the effort to trace the connec¬ 
tion between man’s physical qualities and his develop¬ 
ment and civilization. 


sphere 

The next step is the study and classification of the 
various races of man. This is called ethnology, 
from ethnos, meaning “race.” This subject deals 
with the physical differences between the white and 
the black races, between the American Indian and 
the Chinaman. It compares the skeletons and skulls 
of prehistoric men with those of modern types. It 
deals also with the customs and religions of various 
tribes and peoples, their arts and languages—all with 
a view to finding out how the races differ and how 
they developed. 

A special branch of anthropology is called anthropometry, 
from the Greek word metron, “a measure.” It is the science 
which deals with the physical measurements of man, the 
height and weight of various races, the shape of their bones, 
and other bodily peculiarities. It is this science which has 
determined, for instance, that the average height of all men 
is 5 feet 5}4 inches; that the tallest men are the Polynesians, 
who live on the small islands of the Pacific Ocean, and who 
average 5 feet, 9$i inches in height; and that the shortest, 
outside of certain very rare tribes, are the “black fellows” 
of Australia, who average 4 feet 4% inches. The average 
heights of other races and nationalities are: Scotch, 5 feet 
8% inches; Irish, 5 feet 7% inches; Americans (white) and 
English, 5 feet 7% inches; American negroes, 5 feet 6% 
inches; Germans, 5 feet 6J4 inches; French, 5 feet 6U inches; 
Italians, 5 feet 6 inches; Chinese, 5 feet 4 y s inches; Japanese. 
5 feet 3 y s inches. 

A special division of anthropometry, which is extensively 
used in ethnology for classifying the races of man, is called 
craniometry. It deals with the detailed measurements of 
the human skull. Under this system all skulls are classified 
according to the proportion between their length and 
breadth, so that all people are divided into long-headed, 
medium-headed, and short-headed. Efforts have been made 
from time to time to read character by the shape of the 
skull (see Phrenology). This has not met with any recog¬ 
nized scientific success. 

Antietam ( dn-te'tam ), Battle of. For weeks 
the tide of war in the East had been against the 
North, and the depression of the people, after Mc¬ 
Clellan s disastrous Peninsular campaign in Virginia 
in 1862, had been so great that Lincoln had been 
forced to postpone issuing his Emancipation Procla¬ 
mation for fear of seeming to appeal to the negro 
for aid in a losing cause. When he laid aside the 
proclamation, however, he vowed that he would 
give it to the world after the first Union victory. 

But instead of victory things grew darker. General 
Lee crossed the Potomac, carrying the war into the 
North, and striking terror into the hearts of the 
people of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Finally, 
on Sept. 17, 1862, his troops met the numerically 
superior troops of General McClellan at the little 
creek of Antietam in Maryland. All day long the 
battle raged with great slaughter, the loss on each 
side being about 11,000. No decisive results were 
obtained from the fierce conflict of that day, but on 
the next day Lee felt that it was wiser to withdraw 
from the field; thus the victory seemed to be left with 
McClellan. Lee had not obtained the aid from the 
people of Maryland which he had expected, and so 
he recrossed the Potomac into Virginia. McClellan 
made no attempt for a while to follow him, and so 
little military advantage was gained; but the people 


contained in the Eaey Reference Fact-Index at the end of thie work 

149 









ANTIMONY 


ANTISEPTICS 



of the North were encouraged and Lincoln had the 
opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. 
For these two reasons the battle of Antietam is 
one of the important battles of the Civil War. 

An'TIMONY. In its pure state antimony is of little 
use, but combined with other substances it is one of 
the most serviceable of metals. When you read a 
newspaper you may thank the antimony in the type- 
metal for the clear sharp print, for antimony has the 
unusual quality of expanding when it passes from the 
melted to the solid state, and this helps to give a 
sharp cast to the type letters by forcing the alloy into 
every corner of the mold. This metal also hardens 
the lead and tin with which it is mixed, so that thou¬ 
sands of copies of the paper can be printed without 
the type becoming blurred. 

Antimony plays an important part also in the 
manufacture of munitions of war. It is specially 
used to harden shrapnel bullets so they will keep 
their round shape when the shell explodes. Many 
anti-friction alloys contain antimony. 

In its pure state antimony is a brittle, brilliant 
blue-white metal, extracted chiefly from black ore 
called stibnite, which is the sulphide of antimony 
(Sb 2 S3). In ancient times stibnite was used by 
oriental women for painting their eyebrows and eye¬ 
lashes. Antimony red, an oxysulphide of antimony, 
is still employed in the manufacture of certain brilliant 
red oil-colors and pigments, as well as for safety 
matches and fireworks. Stibnite is mined mostly in 
central Europe, China, and Japan, but recently large 
deposits have been developed in California, Nevada, 
and Alaska. 

The salts of antimony are highly poisonous, having 
an effect similar to that of arsenic salts. 

An tioch, Syria. The modern Turkish town of 
Antakiyeh, on the Orontes River, situated 20 miles 
from the Mediterranean Sea, at the angle formed by 
the great peninsula of Asia Minor, does not even 
remotely suggest the splendors of ancient Antioch, 
the “ Queen of the East.” 

The old city was founded about 300 b.c. by one 
of the generals of Alexander the Great, and became 
the capital of the Seleucid kings of Syria. It drew 
great wealth from the caravan trade to India and 
grew into a center of Greek culture. Just beyond 
its 70-foot walls lay the famous and beautiful grove 
of Daphne, filled with magnificent temples which 
attracted pagan pilgrims from all parts of the civilized 
world of those days. The abandoned luxury of 
Antioch, even after it had passed under Roman rule, 
attracted the reforming spirit of the Apostles, 
especially Barnabas and Paul—and perhaps Peter— 
who are said to have sowed the seed which eventually 
converted half of the 200,000 population. It was 
here that the name “Christian” was first used 
(Acts ix, 26). The most famous saint of the region 
was Simeon Stylites, who spent 30 years doing 
penance on top of a high pillar, not far from Antioch. 


After suffering severely from earthquakes, Antioch 
was sacked in 538 a.d. by the Persian king Chosroes, 
and never recovered its former glory. It was taken 
from the Seljuk Turks by the Crusaders after a 
nine-months’ siege in 1098. For nearly two centuries 
it remained a Christian principality, then fell again 
to the Mohammedans in 1268, after great destruction 
and slaughter. This last blow ended ancient Antioch. 
Little remains of the old city except a few ruins 
of the great aqueducts and parts of the walls. 

The Antakiyeh of today is a trade center for tobacco, 
corn, cotton, and silk, grown in the surrounding regions, and 
exports valuable quantities of licorice. The coming of 
railway transportation may revive its wealth, but the city 
is shabby and poor in appearance, and still suffers from its 
ancient foe—earthquakes. Population, about 25,000. 

ANTISEPTICS. Not many years ago the slightest 
surgical operation was attended by the greatest 
danger. Even when the operation itself was entirely 
successful, the patient often died later from what was 
called “blood-poisoning.” Now in 1863 Louis 
Pasteur, the great French scientist, published a report 
showing that decay in animal and vegetable sub¬ 
stances was caused by microbes or germs. 

This article attracted no notice among physicians 
until, in 1865, a copy fell into the hands of Joseph 
Lister, an English surgeon then working in Edin¬ 
burgh. For years Lister had been trying to find the 
cause of blood-poisoning among hospital patients 
who had undergone operations. He was keen enough 
to see in Pasteur’s discovery the answer to his prob¬ 
lem. Blood-poisoning, he reasoned, was caused by 
these germs entering the wounds. So he began treat¬ 
ing wounds with carbolic acid and other chemicals 
that destroyed these germs, and in this way he laid 
the foundation for modern surgery (see Bacteria; 
Germ Theory of Disease). 

These germ-killing chemicals are called antisep¬ 
tics, from the Greek anti, meaning “against,” and 
sepsis, meaning “decay.” Later Lister developed his 
antiseptic methods into aseptic surgery (from asepsis, 
meaning “without decay”). The difference is that 
in the former the germ was killed after it entered the 
wound, while the latter method, which is in use today, 
prevents the germ from getting in. This is done by 
using antiseptics to destroy the germs on all the 
surgical instruments, sponges, dressings, and every¬ 
thing which comes in contact with the patient during 
the operation. This process is called sterilization, 
and anything which has been made absolutely free 
from germs is called sterile or sterilized. For these 
great services to humanity Lister was made a baron. 

Life-Savers in the World War 

Naturally, antiseptic methods are not confined to 
surgical operations. Wounds received by accident 
or in battle are treated in the same way. During the 
World War of 1914-18 many improved ways of treat¬ 
ing gunshot wounds were developed, which not only 
saved thousands of lives, but reduced tremendously 
the loss of limbs as the result of infection. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

150 






How They Kill Germs 


ANTITOXINS 


The antiseptics commonly used for medical pur¬ 
poses are carbolic acid, bichloride of mercury, iodine, 
iodoform, salicylic acid, peroxide of hydrogen, boric 
acid, and various coal-tar preparations. Most 
antiseptics are poisonous to men as well as to germs 
and they should always be used with care. But 
chemicals are not the only foes of bacteria; germs can 
also be killed by heat. Drinking water and milk are 
frequently boiled for this purpose, instruments are 
sterilized by heating in a flame or by boiling, and 
the clothing of patients who have suffered from 
contagious diseases is often burned to prevent the 
spread of infection. 

To rid rooms and houses of contagious germs, or 
to kill insect pests, poisonous gases, such as formalde¬ 
hyde, sulphur dioxide, and the fumes of hydrocyanic 
acid, are released after all doors and windows have 
been closed. This process is called fumigation and 
will usually exterminate within a few hours every 
living thing on the premises. In fact so many 
inexperienced persons have been killed while using 
the hydrocyanic acid method that it is forbidden in 
many cities. The common household antiseptics 
used to keep sinks and other plumbing in a sanitary 
condition are ordinarily called disinfectants or germi¬ 
cides, though most of them do nothing more than to 
destroy odors and hence should be called deodorants. 

Preservatives for Foods 

A distinction must be made here between two kinds 
of antiseptic agents. Those we have described are 
active germ-killers, but there are other methods 
which do not attempt to destroy the bacteria, but 
simply to prevent their development and activity. 
The latter are employed chiefly in the food industry, 
and the cold storage system is the best example. 
Chemical 'preservatives cannot be used on fresh meats, 
so the meats are frozen. This does not kill the germs 
of decay, but stops their work, which will be resumed 
as soon as they “warm up.” 

In curing hams and corned beef, however, and in 
canning and preserving other meats, as well as fruits 
and vegetables, the active antiseptic principle is used. 
These foods are smoked or salted or cooked, and 
sealed in air-tight receptacles—all of which prevents 
them from “spoiling” by first killing the old bacteria 
and then excluding all newcomers. The use of small 
amounts of chemical preservatives in foods, like 
ketchup, which have to be exposed to the air for long 
periods before they are consumed, is allowed by 
law, although the practice is carefully regulated by 
the government ( see Pure Food Laws). Such pre¬ 
servatives are alcohol, benzoate of soda, sulphite of 
soda, and borax. 

Wood which is exposed to the air is often given 
antiseptic treatment with creosote or tar, which 
keeps away the bacteria of rot. 

ANTITOXINS and Serum Therapy. The germs 
which cause the dreaded disease called tetanus or 
“lockjaw” produce in the body of their victim what 
is probably the most poisonous substance known. 



This tetanus toxin or poison is about 250 times more 
deadly than strychnine. A drop or two injected into 
the blood of an elephant would kill it. 

Yet medical science has discovered a treatment for 
fighting this poison—an “anti-poison” or antitoxin, as 
it is called—so that if a guinea-pig is given this treat¬ 
ment, he will survive the dose that kills the elephant. 

People used to believe that disease germs produced 
their evil effects by feeding upon the blood or the 
tissues of the sick person. But scientists soon learned 
that the real cause of the trouble was a poison pro¬ 
duced by the germs. This was proved by raising a 
colony of disease germs in a liquid culture, then filter¬ 
ing out the germs and injecting the liquid in which 
they had lived into some animal, which promptly 
developed the disease, although no germs had gone 
into its system. 

Then the great discovery was made that nature had 
provided men and animals with a marvelous medicine 
right in their own bodies. As soon as the germs 
started making their poisons, the body of the victims 
started making anti-poisons. Then there was a race 
between the germs and the body. If the germs made 
poisons faster than the body made anti-poisons, the 
patient died; if the body could work faster, the patient 
got well. And not only did he get well but, in the case 
of many diseases, he became immune to the disease in 
question. In other words, if he had recovered from 
diphtheria, he could laugh at any new diphtheria 
germs for a while; they had no effect on him. 

The Fighting Antitoxins 

What had happened? He had developed in his sys¬ 
tem so great a quantity of the anti-poisons or anti¬ 
toxins that these remained for a time in his blood 
ready to fight off diphtheria, if it should try to return. 
Perhaps his blood had even developed the power to 
destroy the germ itself before it could make any 
poisons. 

It was found that these protective powers were 
contained in the serum of the blood—that watery sub¬ 
stance which remains when the blood becomes clotted. 
Blood serum, therefore, which had acquired the power 
to fight germ poisons was called antitoxic serum; and 
that which had the power to destroy the germ itself 
was called antibacterial serum. 

The discovery of these wonderful facts about blood 
serum gave rise to new methods of treating disease. 
Why not, asked the scientists, give artificial help to 
the blood in its fight against the germ poisons? This 
could be done in one of two ways: (1) by inducing 
the body to make its own antitoxin or antibacterial 
serum before the beginning of the disease; (2) by 
injecting into the body antitoxin or antibacterial 
serum produced by some other creature. 

The first of these methods, known as the vaccine 
treatment, had actually been used in the case of small¬ 
pox long before the discovery of the germ theory of 
disease ( see Germ Theory of Disease; Vaccination). 
But it was rapidly put into effect on other germ dis¬ 
eases such as typhoid fever, etc. In general, it con- 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

151 






ANTWERP 



1 ANTITOXINS 

sists in inoculating a healthy person with dead or very 
much weakened germs of the disease in question, 
whereupon the blood of the person develops and 
maintains for some time the power to resist these 
same germs in their active or virulent state. 

The second method consists in obtaining the toxin 
of the disease germs from an artificial culture, and 
injecting this toxin in gradually increasing doses into 
the body of some animal, usually a horse. Under 
this treatment the blood of the horse soon develops 
very high antitoxic powers. It is then drawn off in 
small quantities; the serum is separated, and is then 
ready to be injected into anyone threatened with the 
disease in question. 

Cholera, bubonic plague, hydrophobia, influenza, 
cerebro-spinal meningitis, blood-poisoning, and pneu¬ 
monia are among the maladies in which serum or vac¬ 
cine therapy have been used with varying degrees of 
success. But the most striking results have been 
obtained in diphtheria, tetanus, and typhoid fever, 
especially as a means of protecting individuals against 
these diseases. 

Formerly children suffering from diphtheria who 
were not given the serum treatment died in from 35 
to 40 per cent of the cases; those who now get the 
treatment in time die in only 9 to 13 per cent of the 
cases. Tetanus was fatal in nearly every case before 
the discovery of antitoxin; now a number of the cases 
recover when promptly treated. But the great use¬ 
fulness for tetanus antitoxin is in the prevention of 
the disease. Thus antitetanus serum was used 
wherever possible in treating the severely wounded 
in the World War of 1914-18, and thousands of lives 
were saved as a result. 

Each year sees some new discovery, some improved 
method in this field of medicine, and it is not too much 
to hope that before long many other diseases will be 
cured or curtailed in this way. 

Ant-LION. This singular creature, sometimes called 
the “ doodle-bug,” is remarkable for the ingenious way 

in which it hunts its 
prey. It is the young 
or larva of an insect 
somewhat resembling 
a dragon fly, but 
smaller, with four large 
lacy wings and a long 
slender body. The 
adult fly lays its eggs 
on the sand, and when 
the larva hatches it 
digs into the sand, 
using its head as a 
shovel, and forms a 
deep funnel-shaped 
pit, with steep sides. 
At the bottom lies 
the ant-lion—a short humpbacked creature, with 
a large head and strong curved jaws, which work 
sidewise. With its body buried in the sand and only 


its cruel curved jaws projecting, it lies motionless 
until some unwary ant or other small insect falls over 
the edge of the pit and slides down. If the victim 
seems likely to escape, the ant-lion casts up a shower 
of sand with its strong broad head, and thus hastens 
the descent of the struggler. 

The next time you see the pit of one of these 
creatures in the sand by the roadside, put your mouth 
down close to it and say: “Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, 
come out of your hole!” At once you will see a 
scrambling at the bottom of the pit, for your breath 
has set the sand grains sliding and the ant-lion thinks 
a victim is in his trap. 

ANTWERP ( dnt’werp ), Belgium. The city of 
Antwerp, the metropolis of Belgium and one of the 
greatest seaports of Europe, has long played an 
important role in history because of its situation and 
its commercial importance. Located 50 miles from 
the open sea, on the right bank of the Scheldt River, 
which is here 2,200 feet wide, Antwerp possesses one 
of the finest harbors of the world, through which 
passes a huge volume of imports and exports, some¬ 
times totaling a billion dollars a year. Besides 
its commerce Antwerp is important for its diamond¬ 
cutting, sugar-refining, brewing and distilling, and its 
manufacture of textiles and cigars. 

Its commanding position was attained only after 
a long and troubled career. The city was founded 
some time in the 8th century and is said by some 
scholars to have acquired its name— Hand-werpen 
(“hand-throwing”)—from the gruesome practice of 
one of its robber chieftains who cut off the hands of his 
prisoners and threw them into the Scheldt. By the 
middle of the 16th century Antwerp had become one 
of the most prosperous cities in Europe and the world’s 
chief money-market, but in 1576 it was pillaged and 
burned for three days during the “Spanish Fury” 
because it had taken part in the revolt from Spain, 
which then ruled the Netherlands. The city was 
ruined and its inhabitants scattered. 

Not until the days of Napoleon did it start again on 
the upward road, when it fell into the hands of 
France. Napoleon began the improvement of its 
harbor to make Antwerp a rival to London and a 
“revolver held at the breast of England.” With this 
impetus Antwerp continued to grow even after the 
downfall of Napoleon’s empire in 1814. Its com¬ 
merce received another setback in 1830 when Belgium 
separated from Holland, for the latter country con¬ 
trolled both banks of the lower Scheldt and imposed 
heavy tolls on all vessels ascending or descending the 
river. This obstacle was not removed until 1863 
(see Scheldt River). 

Antwerp suffered another heavy blow at the opening 
of the World War in 1914. Although its fortifications 
had been strengthened after the Franco-Prussian War 
of 1870-71, so that it was considered the strongest 
fortified city in Europe, it took the Germans only ten 
days to drive out the Belgian army. On Oct. 8, 1914, 
they occupied the town, which they had long coveted 


ANT-LION DIGGING ITS PIT 



This is an ant-lion just beginning to 
dig its pit. It works by pushing 
backward in circles and thus crowd¬ 
ing aside the sand, which it throws 
out with its broad flat head. 


For any tubject not found in its alphabetical place tee information 

152 









Belgium’s Metropolis 


APE 


because of its strategic location, and did not give it up 
until their withdrawal from Belgium in 1918. 

In spite of all these disasters there still stand in 
Antwerp some of the old buildings. The most famous 
is the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was started in 
the 14th century. With its 400-foot tower it is the 
most conspicuous building in the city, and in it are 
housed three of Rubens’ great paintings, ‘The 
Descent from the Cross,’ ‘The Elevation of the 
Cross,’ and ‘The Assumption.’ Other important 


later near that same spot he found a thigh bone that 
had evidently belonged to this same prehistoric skele¬ 
ton. Upon studying these remains he decided that 
what he had found was a specimen of the long sought 
“missing link,” the supposed ancestor alike of man 
and the higher apes. He named his discovery Pithe¬ 
canthropus erectus (“erect man-ape”), and soon the 
whole world rang with his discovery and discussions 
as to its meaning. Scientists now generally believe 
that the creature was not the earliest of the apes, as 


THE MONKEYS AND THE “MISSING LINK” 




This is one scientist’s recon¬ 
struction of Pithecanthropus 
erectus, made from the few 
bones found in Java. Was the 
creature man or ape? Probably 
he was a “running ape” who 
differed from his tree-dwelling 
relatives chiefly in the greater 
size and development of his 
brain. Of course this is only a 
guess at his appearance. 


As you pursue the fascinating study of science and get into the subject of evolution, you will hear a great deal about “missing links,” and 
particularly about the link that is supposed to connect man with the monkey family. This group of pictures will enable you to form some 
notion for yourself as to the close relation between the lowest order of men and the highest representatives of the monkey tribe, the apes. 
On the left are two apes (chimpanzees) in the New York Zoo, familiarly known by their friends as Susie and Dick, while on the right is a 
restoration of the head of the “missing link” which a Dutch doctor found in the island of Java. Scientists call this strange creature 

Pithecanthropus erectus, which is Latin for “erect man-ape.” 


buildings are the richly decorated town-hall, built in 
the 16th century, and the gallery containing a priceless 
collection of Rubens’ and Van Dyck’s paintings. 
Fine boulevards mark the site of the old city walls. 
Population, about 
310,000. 

APE. Man’s near¬ 
est cousins are the 
tailless semi-erect 
apes—the chimpan¬ 
zee, orang-utan, 
gorilla, and gibbon— 
which inhabit tropi¬ 
cal Asia and Africa; 
the likeness is espe¬ 
cially strong in the 
young. 

In 1891 a Dutch 
doctor in the island 
of Java, while watching some workmen digging in a 
river bank, saw them unearth some very old fossil 
bones—some teeth and part of a skull; and a year 

contained in the Easy Reference 


was at first thought, but rather the earliest of men of 
whom we have found any material traces—though the 
apelike characteristics are very strongly marked. 

In the structure of their bodies apes approach man 

very nearly, and the 
bodily differences 
are no greater than 
those which sepa¬ 
rate the various 
species from one 
another. Indeed it 
requires special 
anatomical knowl¬ 
edge to appreciate 
what these differ¬ 
ences are. Even in 
the brain structure 
the differences be¬ 
tween the apes and 
the lowest of mankind are chiefly in size, in con¬ 
volutions, and in microscopic structure. The con¬ 
volution containing the brain cells that preside over 

Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

153 


THE WONDERFUL HAND THAT MAN SHARES WITH THE APES 



One of the most important steps in the upward progress from the lower animals to 
man was the development of a hand with an “opposable” thumb, that can be easily 
made to meet the tips of the fingers, so that it can grasp and wield tools. The mem¬ 
bers of the ape and monkey group are the only animals that share with man the 
possession of this enormous advantage. In this picture, which shows in order the 
hands of the orang-utan, gibbon, gorilla, macaque, baboon and chimpanzee, you can 
easily see the resemblance to the human hand at the right. 











speech (called the convolution of Broca) is lacking 
in the apes, and there are of course other differences. 

Apes live chiefly on fruits and other vegetable 
food. The gorilla is as large as or larger than man. 
All apes can walk erect as man does, though they are 
more at home in climbing, as is shown by the handlike 
character of their feet. They have no tails and no 
cheek pouches, and have great strength and in¬ 
telligence. The gorilla, especially the male, is by 
nature very savage and among the most dangerous 
of wild animals. The orang-utan is less savage. 
The chimpanzee and especially the gibbon are timid 
and easily alarmed. (See also Chimpanzee; Gorilla; 
Orang-utan.) 

The doctrine of evolution does not teach that any existing 
ape is in the direct line of man’s ancestry, but that the 
“simian” (or monkey) line and the human line are united 
in remote ancestors common to both groups. 

The existing apes are, therefore, side branches as it were 
of the ancestral tree, and not in the direct line of descent. 
The apes are progressing in their habits. Some of them 
build rude stone shelters, use clubs and stones in defense, 
and so forth; but a popular misconception should be corrected 
—their progress is not directly toward humanity, but toward 
a more perfect apelike character. 

APENNINE MOUNTAINS. Picture to yourself a vast 
dreary mountain wall, with parts of its surface bare, 
and few projecting peaks to break the dull monotony 
of the scene. Such is the great Apennine range which 
forms the backbone of the Italian peninsula, covering 
about two-thirds of its area. It extends from Savona, 
near the head of the Gulf of Genoa, to Reggio in the 
toe of the boot. The general shape of the range is 
that of a bow, 800 miles long and varying from 25 to 
85 miles wide. 

Only in the Abruzzi in the center of the peninsula, 
and in the marble mountains of Carrara and Sera- 
vezza, do the bold and magnificent forms of the Alps 
appear. Here the mountains parallel the eastern 
coast so closely that in many places there is hardly 
room for more than a narrow road between the abrupt 
mountain sides and the Adriatic. The highest sun- 
mit of the Apennines, Mt. Corno (9,585 feet), lies in 
this part of the range. Few of the peaks are more 
than G,500 feet high. The famous Mt. Vesuvius 
(4,200 feet), an active volcano which in ancient days 
destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Hercu¬ 
laneum, lies in a smaller chain to the west, sometimes 
called the Lower Apennines. 

The widespreacling uplands and slopes furnish 
excellent pasturage where there is water, and the 
lower flanks are in many places covered with groves 
of orange, citron, olive, and even palm trees. Along 
the western base are found many pleasant valleys, 
much wider than the valleys of the Alps, covered with 
a varied vegetation and sheltering famous cities and 
picturesque villages. The Apennines contain little 
mineral wealth and the lack of adequate supplies of 
coal and iron is a great drawback to Italy. 

All the rivers of Italy south of the Po valley rise in the 
Apennines. Those on the Adriatic side, where the moun¬ 
tains approach nearest the coast, are mere mountain 


torrents. On the western side there is room for larger 
streams to develop; of these the Arno and the Tiber are 
best known. 


Aphids ( af'idz ). On the stems and leaves of plants 
one often sees very tiny greenish or blackish creatures, 

MILKING TIME IN ANTDOM 



Any time is milking time among the ants; whenever you feel hungry 
and come across a “cow.” Miss Ant, who is also her own dairy¬ 
maid, is here stroking the little aphid “cow,” who is thus induced 

to “give down” the honey dew that the ants so greatly relish. 

with soft rounded balloon-like bodies, usually clus¬ 
tered in dense groups. These are aphids, or plant-lice 
as they are more commonly called. They are found 
on nearly all kinds of cultivated plant life, the grape 
aphids or phylloxera being one of the most destructive 
species. Our most common forms are very small, 
never more than an eighth of an inch in length. They 
have long slender legs, and long antennae or feelers. 
The tiny head bears a pair of very large eyes and a 
long beak. With this they suck up the sap of plants. 
Usually they have no wings, but sometimes aphids 
hatch which have wings. With these they may fly 
to other plants, and so prevent overcrowding. 

Most aphids form a sweet liquid known as “honey 
dew,” which is greatly relished by some species of 
ants. To obtain this the ants stroke the aphids 
gently with their feelers and then drink the honey 
dew as it is poured out. Some ants even capture the 
aphids and carry them to plants near their nests, 
where they care for them in the most tender way, 
driving away enemies and seeing that they are placed 
on strong young plants. That is why the aphids 
are sometimes called “the ants’ cows.” 

These curious little creatures sometimes multiply 
by laying eggs, but among most forms the females 
bring forth the young alive, generation after genera¬ 
tion in rapid succession. Their numbers increase so 
rapidly that they would kill the greater part of plant 
life if it were not for their many enemies. One of the 
natural enemies of aphids is the ladybird beetle, which 
aids a great deal in keeping down their numbers. 

Scientific name, Aphididae; order, Hemiptera. The grape 
aphis is Phylloxera vastatrix. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 









APHRODITE 


APOLLO 



Aphrodite ( df-ro-dl'te ). Far back in the dawn of 
creation, the goddess Aphrodite—so the poetical 
Greeks imagined—sprang full-grown from the sea, 
where its waters had been dyed a rosy red with the 
blood of one of the gods, wounded in a quarrel with 
his son. From the tossing foam arose the radiant 
Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, the fairest 
creature of heaven or earth. A huge sea-shell floated 
nearby, as it chanced. Lightly the lovely goddess 
sprang upon it, and as she stood there the glistening 
drops of water rolled from her shining limbs and 
beautiful tresses, and fell into the shell as splendid 
pearls. Look, look, why shine 

Those floating bubbles with such light divine? 

They break, and from their mist a lily form 

Rises from out the wave, in beauty warm. 

The wave is by the blue-veined feet scarce press’d, 

Her silky ringlets float about her 
breast, 

Veiling its fairy loveliness; while her 
eye 

Is soft and deep as the blue heaven is 
high. 

The Beautiful is born; and sea and 
earth 

May well revere the hour of that 
mysterious birth. 

— Shelley. 

Entranced with her loveliness, 

Zephyrus, the gentle god of the west 
wind, breathed softly upon the shell 
and wafted it to the island of Cyprus. 

At the touch of her feet on the dry 
sand, grass sprang up and flowers 
burst into bloom, filling the air with 
their ravishing odors. Verdure clothed 
the'whole island to greet the new-born 
queen of love, and a company of beauti¬ 
ful maidens appeared to receive her— 
the “rosy-bosomed Hours”, and the 
three lovely Graces, who rejoiced in 
the sweet-sounding names of Aglaia, 

Euphrosyne, and Thalia. They decked 
her with garments of immortal fabric, placing a 
crown of gold on her brow, a glittering chain on her 
neck, and precious rings in her ears. 

The Woes Caused by the Goddess 

They escorted the new-born goddess, thus arrayed, 
to the summit of Mount Olympus, where the other 
gods had their dwelling. At the sight of such sur¬ 
passing beauty the gods were entranced and each 
desired her for his wife, but the proud Aphrodite re¬ 
jected them all. So to punish her, Zeus the king of 
gods and men gave her to be the bride of Hephaestus 
(Vulcan), the lame and awkward but good-natured and 
wonderfully skilful god of the forge. All the gods and 
goddesses brought gifts for the bride. But the most 
wonderful of all were the presents wrought by 
Hephaestus himself. These included a palace in the 
island of Cyprus, built of white marble, with towers 
and ornaments of gold and silver. In it were golden 


harps which made sweet music all day long, and 
golden birds which sang the sweetest songs. But 
Aphrodite was faithless and fickle, and caused much 
woe on Olympus and among men by reason of her 
preference for other gods and other men. The story 
of her love for the beautiful youth Adonis is told else¬ 
where in this book ( see Adonis). 

Unlike her sister-goddess Athena, Aphrodite seldom 
dared take part in the wars of gods and men. Indeed 
the poet Homer styled her “a coward goddess and 
none of those that have a mastery in the battle of 
warriors.” But since it was through her that the 
Trojan prince Paris had stolen away the beautiful 
Helen from Greece, Aphrodite did what she could to 
aid the Trojans in the war that followed. 

How She was Wounded by a Mortal 

When once a Trojan warrior particularly dear to 
her was wounded in battle with Diomedes, she wound 
about him her white arms and spread 
before him the protection of her radi¬ 
ant vesture, and sought to bear him 
from the field. But raging Diomedes 
cried out: 

“ Is it not enough that thou beguilest 
feeble woman? If in battle thou wilt 
mingle, verily I deem that thou wilt 
shudder even at its name when heard 
afar off.” 

So saying he thrust with his keen 
spear and wounded the skin of her 
weak hand; and straight through the 
ambrosial garment that the Graces 
themselves had woven pierced the 
dart into the flesh. Then flowed the 
ichor, the sacred blood of the gods, 
from her veins, and Aphrodite fled in 
amaze and sore troubled to Olympus 
to be healed and consoled. 

The name Aphrodite means “bom of 
the sea-foam.” Aphrodite is often repre¬ 
sented as accompanied by her son Eros 
(Cupid), a lovely, rosy, mischievous child 
with a bow and quiver of love-compelling 
arrows. The worship of Aphrodite was widespread. Her 
connection with the sea endeared her to sailors, and on 
land many temples were built in her honor. On the 
waters the swan and dolphin were sacred to her; on land 
the dove and the sparrow. As goddess of flowers and 
fruitfulness she loved especially the rose, the poppy, and 
the myrtle. As goddess of love she ruled the hearts of 
men. Many poets have sung of her, and painters and 
sculptors have delighted to picture her as the perfect type 
of feminine beauty. 

The Romans identified their goddess Venus with the 
Greek Aphrodite. One of the most beautiful statues that 
have come down to us from antiquity is the famous Venus 
of Milo, found buried amid ruins in the Greek island of 
Melos (Milo) in 1820, and now one of the prized possessions 
in the museum of the Louvre in Paris. 

APOLLO. Of all the twelve great gods of Greece, 
the most widely worshiped and many-sided was 
Apollo. He was the god of light and of youth and 
manly beauty; and as the god of prophecy the priest¬ 
ess of the oracle at Delphi was his servant. 


VENUS OF MILO 



This is the head and bust of what 
is regarded as the most beautiful 
statue in the world, the Venus of 
Milo. When found the arms were 
broken off and missing. One 
theory is that'the goddess held in 
her hand an apple, which was the 
symbol of the island of Melos 
(Milo), on which her statue was 
found. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this 

155 


work 






APOLLO 


The Nine Muses 



One of the earliest deeds of the young Apollo was 
the slaying of the deadly serpent Python, born of 
slime and stagnant waters, which infested the slopes 

near Delphi. No man 
dared to approach the 
monster, and the ter¬ 
rified people cried out 
with uplifted hands: 

“0 Apollo! Save 
us from this plague of 
suffering and death!” 

Then the young 
god, beautiful as the 
morning and the en¬ 
emy of all things ugly 
or evil, came down 
from Olympus with 
his shining bow in his 
hand and a quiver 
upon his back. 
Twang! sang the 
bowstring and away 
sped a golden arrow. 
And soon the writhing 
hateful monster had 
ceased to send forth his poisonous breath. In memory 
of this conquest Apollo instituted the Pythian games, 
held every four years in ancient Greece, in which the 
victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or the 


Once a vain and boastful satyr named Marsyas 
found a flute which the goddess Athena had thrown 
away because playing it distorted her features. When 
Marsyas discovered that of its own accord it gave forth 
the most delightful strains, he became so conceited 
that he challenged Apollo to a musical contest. 

The nine Muses—goddesses of music and poetry— 
were chosen as judges. Marsyas was first called upon 
to play, and charmed all by his melodious strains. 
The Muses bestowed upon him much praise, and then 
bade Apollo surpass his rival if he could. 

The god seized his lyre and brought forth the most 
wonderful melodies. A second time they strove, and 
on this occasion Apollo sang to the accompaniment 
of his lyre. He was hailed by all as the conqueror, 
and poor Marsyas forfeited not only the contest but 
his life as well, for according to the agreement the 
one who lost was to be flayed alive. 

Apollo was the son of Zeus and twin brother of Arte¬ 
mis (Diana); he was born on the island of Delos in the 
Aegean Sea, his mother being the goddess Leto (La- 
tona). Later, through confusion with Helios, he came 
to be considered especially as the sun-god. The Greeks 
connected him with agriculture, and called him “the 
protector of the grain,” “the sender of fertilizing dew,” 
“the preventer of blight,” “destroyer of locusts,” and 
“destroyer of mice.” They considered him also the 
guardian of flocks and herds, and a health-giving god. 
He was hailed as the “far-darter” and “god of the 


THE APOLLO BELVEDERE 



This picture shows the head and 
shoulders of the most famous of all 
the statues of Apollo—the Apollo 
Belvedere; “all-radiant from his tri¬ 
umph in the fight.” 


THE DANCE OF APOLLO AND THE MUSES 



As the god of music, Apollo is frequently represented as the leader of the choir of the Muses, the inspiring goddesses of song. In this 
reproduction of a painting by Jules Romain, a pupil of Raphael, the names of the nine Muses are given in Greek. You can easily identify 
Apollo in the center with his quiver. The Muses, beginning at the left, are Urania (the muse of astronomy), Thalia (comedy), Euterpe 
(lyric poetry), Polyhymnia (religious music), Terpsichore (dancing), Melpomene (tragedy), Erato (love poetry), Clio (history),’ Calliope 

(epic poetry). 


chariot race, was crowned with a wreath of laurel 
leaves. 

Apollo was also the god of song and music, and 
charmed the gods with his playing at the banquets 
held in their palaces on Mount Olympus. It was 
said among the later Greeks that he invented both 
the flute and the lyre. 


silver bow,” and in wartime as “the helper” and “god 
of the war cry.” 

At Delphi in western Greece, near the foot of Mount 
Parnassus—which was sacred to Apollo and the Muses 
—was the famous oracle of Apollo. Here his priestess 
made known the future to all who consulted her, giv¬ 
ing guidance in matters of sickness, war and peace, 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

156 


place 


see information 













APOSTLES 


| Famous Statues of Apollo $^4 

and in the building of colonies. As the god of 
prophecy the tripod was sacred to Apollo. 

Apollo was represented more frequently than any other 
deity in ancient art. Sculptors delighted in portraying him 
as a beautiful youth with flowing hair tied in a knot above 
his forehead, which was bound with a wreath of laurel, and 
bearing his lyre or bow. The most famous statue of him 
is the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican palace, at Rome. 
This is an ancient masterpiece in marble, which represents 
him at the moment of his conquest over the Python. His 
left hand outstretched was supposed to hold the bow, from 
which his right had just released the arrow. 

Apostles. “He went into the mountains to pray, 
and continued all night in prayer to God. And when 
it was day he called his disciples, and he chose from 
them twelve men whom he also named apostles.” 

In these few words the New Testament tells us of 
the choosing by Jesus of the 12 men whom he selected 
to be near him for continuous instruction and later 
to spread abroad his message. The word apostle 
(from Greek words meaning “from” and “to send”) 
signifies a messenger and teacher. These 12 men were 
Simon (called Peter), Andrew his brother, James the 
elder (son of Zebedee), John his brother, Philip of 
Bethsaida, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James 
the younger (son of Alpheus), Simon (called Zelotes), 
Judas (called Thaddeus, the brother of James the 
younger), and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to 
the high priests and then, overcome with remorse, 
committed suicide. The number 12 was symbolical, 
signifying the 12 tribes of Israel. Matthias was chosen 
by the drawing or casting of lots to supply the place 
left vacant by Judas Iscariot. Simon Peter and 
Andrew, and John and James the elder, were fisher¬ 
men, and Matthew was a “publican” or tax-gatherer. 

Save for the very meager accounts in the New 
Testament, the literature of the early church is so 
fragmentary that there is no full or certain knowledge 
of the lives of the Apostles. It is natural, therefore, 
that a great mass of tradition, much of it unreliable, 
has sprung up around the names of these beloved 
leaders, who by their teaching and even martyrdom 
established the Christian church. 

The Apostolic Tradition 

Peter, apparently, was the leader of the Apostles 
and was present at most of the incidents in the life 
of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. He, with 
the sons of Zebedee (James and John), formed a little 
inner circle within the Twelve, and this favored group 
was present at the raising of the daughter of Jairus, 
the transfiguration on the mount, and the scene in the 
Garden of Gethsemane. Although Andrew, brother 
of Peter, is only mentioned a few times, he too seems 
to have been later included in this little inner circle; 
for when the Greeks asked Philip if they might see 
Him, he consulted Andrew before laying the matter 
before the Master. A widespread tradition concern¬ 
ing Peter holds that he went to Rome and suffered 
martyrdom there (see Peter, Saint). 

Andrew, it is said, suffered martyrdom in Greece. 
What is supposed to be part of his cross is inclosed in 
one of the four great piers of the dome of St. Peter’s 



Church. This cross is traditionally reported to have 
been shaped like a letter “X” whence comes our 
“St. Andrew’s cross.” 

John, “the beloved disciple,” is represented 
throughout the Gospels as fiery natured. After the 
crucifixion John appears to have been with Peter 
and the other Apostles at Jerusalem and is, after 
Peter, the most prominent of those who bear witness 
to His resurrection. It is not now believed by scholars 
that he wrote either the Gospel, the Epistles, or the 
Revelation named in his honor. 

His brother, James the elder or the greater, must 
have been very prominent in the early church. He 
was the first martyr, being slain by King Herod in 
Jerusalem (Acts xii, 1, 2). Some authorities believe 
that John also was slain at that time, although 
tradition has given him a long life of missionary 
service. 

Thomas, sometimes called “doubting Thomas” be¬ 
cause he would not believe in the resurrection until 
he could see and touch the Master, is yet a character 
of singular charm and interest. When Jesus, despite 
imminent danger at the hands of the Jews, declared 
his intention to go to Bethany to heal Lazarus, 
Thomas alone supported the Master against the other 
disciples, who sought to dissuade him, and said, 
“Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John xi, 
1-16). Tradition says that Thomas went to India 
after the crucifixion. The name “Christians of St. 
Thomas” is often applied to the members of the 
ancient Christian churches of southern India, who 
claim him as their first evangelist and martyr. 

Others who Suffered Martyrdom 

Of Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew (the reputed 
author of the First Gospel), Simon Zelotes, Thaddeus, 
and James the younger, we learn little from the New 
Testament. Bartholomew, one legend says, was 
flayed and crucified while on a missionary trip to 
India, a very wide designation in those days. In 
works of art he is generally represented with a large 
knife, the instrument of his martyrdom, and in 
Michelangelo’s ‘ Last Judgment’ he appears with his 
skin hanging over his arm. Early authorities state 
that Matthew died a natural death, but by other 
writers he is said to have suffered martyrdom after 
preaching in Ethiopia. James the younger, it is 
said, was stoned to death for persisting in his evangel¬ 
istic work in Israel. 

The name “apostle” was later applied to Paul, and 
to Barnabas who accompanied Paul on his travels 
(see Paul, Saint). It is also given at times to such 
apostolic assistants as Luke “the beloved physician,” 
the traditional writer of the Third Gospel and the 
Book of Acts. It will be noted that only two of the 
four Gospels bear the names of real Apostles. Mark, 
to whom the Second Gospel is ascribed, is believed to 
have been the unnamed youth who fled from the 
Garden when Jesus was made prisoner. Later he was 
Peter’s constant companion in his missionary travels. 
The Gospel which bears his name, and which critios 


contained in the Easy Ref ere nee Fact-Index at the end of this work 

157 






APOSTLES 


APPERCEPTION 



generally agree that he wrote, was the first of the 
Gospels to be written and was based on his recol¬ 
lection of Peter’s teachings. 

Appalachian ( dp-a-lacli'i-an ) mountains. For 
a century the continuousness and bewildering num¬ 
ber of the forest-clad ridges of the Appalachians kept 


the English colonists from extending their settle¬ 
ments westward. Only in the north, by way of the 
Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and at the southern 
termination of the system were there easy routes 
to the Mississippi Valley, and these were jealously 
guarded in the north by the French and in the south 
by the Spaniards. 

But the broad valley between the Blue Ridge and 
Alleghenies of eastern Pennsylvania was easily ac¬ 
cessible; and here German religious refugees (the 
“Pennsylvania Dutch”) formed settlements, and with 
Scotch-Irish immigrants slowly drifted southward 
into the back country by means of the longitudinal 
valleys between the mountain ridges. With the 
removal of the French power, which followed the 
French and Indian War (1755-63), the farther barriers 
of the Alleghenies were crossed, and English settle¬ 
ments at least reached the Ohio and Mississippi val¬ 
leys. Today, at a dozen or more points by means of 
tunnels, cuts, and zig-zag • climbs, the railways sur¬ 
mount these barriers, so that the sleeping traveler in 
his Pullman scarcely realizes that the obstacles ever 
existed. 

Although this mountain system has neither the 
height nor the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, 
it is much older geologically. It extends from New¬ 
foundland and New Brunswick southwestward for 
1,500 miles to central Alabama. A remarkable fea¬ 
ture of the chain is the regular arrangement of its 
low ridges, which throughout its length run almost 
parallel to the Atlantic coast. The mountain sides 
and summits are covered with forests. The ridges 
have round-topped summits rising to rather uniform 
heights. 

In the spring, when the laurel, rhododendron, and 
azalea are in bloom, the slopes and valleys of the 
southern Appalachians are a maze of riotous color. 
These and other flowering and fruit-bearing shrubs 
grow in such profusion as to form almost impenetrable 
thickets. White pine is found in the north; the maple, 
white birch, ash, and beech also grow on the northern 
mountains; and the oak, cherry, white poplar, and 


yellow pine farther south. On the poorer lands 
evergreens flourish, and their dark foliage covering 
the summits of the Black Mountains gives this range 
its name. Bears, mountain lions (puma), and wild 
cats (lynx) haunt the more remote fastnesses. Foxes 
are numerous, deer are found in some districts, and 


moose in the extreme north. Wild turkeys and 
smaller game birds are plentiful on the southern 
ranges. 

When the Appalachians were in process of forma¬ 
tion, enormous swamps of the old plain, filled with 
the remains of marsh vegetation, were covered with 
earth and finally folded up in mountain-making; 
these buried beds of vegetation now form the coal 
beds of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other states. 
Large deposits of iron ore, marble, limestone, and 
gypsum are also found in the Appalachians. 

One of the many interesting features of these 
mountains is their deep crosswise “gaps,” carved by 
the eastward-flowing rivers—the Potomac, the 
Delaware, the Susquehanna, and others—on their 
way to the Atlantic Ocean. 

Among the chief ranges in the north are the White and 
Green Mountains of the New England states. TheAdiron- 
dacks and the Catskills of New York are not properly con¬ 
sidered a part of the Appalachian system. Farther south 
the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge stretch from southern 
Pennsylvania, through Virginia and West Virginia—where 
they inclose the beautiful Shenandoah Valley—and into 
Tennessee and North Carolina. In these states and extend¬ 
ing into Alabama are the Smoky Mountains and the Black 
Mountains. The highest peaks are found in the Black 
Mountains of North Carolina, the loftiest of which, Mount 
Mitchell, reaches an altitude of 6,711 feet. In the north 
Mount Washington, in the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire, is the topmost peak, rising to a height of 
6,293 feet. 

Appercep tion. Suppose a person in crossing a 
stream sees what looks like a dull yellow stone. It 
does not differ much from the other stones surround¬ 
ing it, and if the observer does not know enough 
about that sort of an object to make it more inter¬ 
esting to him than its neighbors, it will not arrest 
his attention. He has only perceived it. Suppose, 
however, that the observer is a savage who has 
noticed such stones before, and that they are unusu¬ 
ally heavy and therefore valuable as missiles. Such 
a person would get from seeing the stone a number 
of suggestions connected with warfare or the hunting 
of wild animals, and be sufficiently interested to pick 
it up and carry it away. This observer has gone a 


THE AGED APPALACHIANS AND THE YOUNG ROCKIES 



To speak of anything several million years old as “young” seems odd to anyone but a geologist. But in the history of mountains a million 
years is merely the tick of a watch. Here is a cross-section of North America, which brings into sharp contrast the difference between the 
old worn-down Appalachians and the comparatively young and still sharply outlined Rockies. Compare Mt. Whitney, nearly three miles 
high, among the young giants of the West, and Mt. Mitchell less than half as high, which is the highest of the Appalachians. Centuries of 
battle with the winds and storms and frosts and running water finally wear down the loftiest of mountains. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

158 


















A PICTURE-DEFINITION OF APPERCEPTION 






To the ape the stone of gold means no more than 
any other stone; he only perceives it 


To the savage it means a stone he a 
for its size than others; therefore 
worth picking up and carrying 
i with him 


But to the mining engineer it means 
and gold in turn calls to his mind 
world of associations, in short he 
apperceives it 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


159 


at the end of this 


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APPERCEPTION 


APPLE 




step farther and related what he sees to what he has 
seen and knows. He has apperceived. 

But if a civilized man perceives that the object is 
not an ordinary stone, but a nugget of gold, his 
interest will become intense because of his knowledge 
of its use as money and in the arts. He will not only 
pick up the nugget but will do so eagerly. A great 
number of ideas will surge into his mind, and it may 
be some time before he will think of anything except 
his discovery and its significance. Moreover, his 
actions will be very extensively modified by the 
experience. If he happens to be a miner, he may 
perceive in the nugget the suggestion of a rich deposit 
of gold in the neighborhood, and the current of his 
life may be turned by its discovery. This is a fine 
example of apperception where according to the Ger¬ 
man philosopher Herbart (1776-1841) old experi¬ 
ences assimilate and give memory to new experiences 
or perceptions. The assimilating power of the mind 
is called apperception. 

The active force in apperception is, with Herbart, 
experience itself, and not, as with Kant, a mind that is 
thought to organize experiences which are themselves 
passive. 

The consequences to education of this view of 
Herbart are very important, especially to the teacher 
or parent. For the successful apperception of a new 
object depends upon two things: First, whether the 
learner already possesses 


any experience with'which 
to interpret it; and second, 
whether the new percep¬ 
tion comes in such a way 
that it calls up this inter¬ 
preting experience. Both 
of these conditions the 
teacher can understand 
and at least partially con¬ 
trol. He can, before he 
presents a new topic, in¬ 
vestigate what the child 
already knows about it. 

This will tell him whether 
the child can apperceive 
the topic at all and, if so, 
to what extent and in 
what way. 

Such a preparation 
brings all or the most valu¬ 
able part of the related ex¬ 
perience possessed by the 
child actively to bear on the new idea, thus insuring 
its apperception. Later, as the new subject becomes 
better mastered, the teacher can suggest the con¬ 
nections between it and other related subjects—thus 
increasing the degree of organization of material in 
the pupil’s mind. Finally, the ideas thus mastered 
can be continually revived at the suggestion of the 
teacher in order to interpret new material or solve 
new problems. 


THE APPLE AND COUSIN ROSE 


From this point of view the teacher is seen to have 
the task of not merely connecting the new object 
with familiar experience, but also that of helping 
the child to see how, in the light of his experience, 
the comprehension of the new topic is worth while. 
In this aspect apperception is very intimately related 
to the educational theory of Interest. 

APPLE. The apple is the king of fruits, and it has 
been cultivated since the earliest times of which we 
have any knowledge. Charred remains of apples 
have been found in ruins of prehistoric lake-dwellings, 
and rude pictures of this fruit were carved long ago 
by the Stone Age men. References to it are common 
in the literature of almost all countries and all ages, 
and fairy-tale and folklore abound with stories of 
apple trees and golden apples. The apple is men¬ 
tioned in the Bible many times; the Greeks held the 
Apple of Discord, awarded by Paris to the goddess 
Aphrodite, responsible for the fall of Troy; and Pliny, 
a writer of ancient Rome, tells of 22 varieties of 
apples common in his day. The fruit was probably 
introduced into England by the Romans during the 
three centuries that they ruled that island. 

It seems curious to find that the apple belongs to 
the great rose family, as do also the peach, cherry, 
plum, raspberry, and many other fruits. But when 
we remember the red seed pods of the rose, sometimes 
called “rose apples,” the relationship does not appear 
sostrange. We can also see 



ily 

the leaves and blossoms of the apple and the rose, but between the 
fruits (really the seed pods in both cases). Many other orchard 
fruits belong to this same great rose family. 


a resemblance between 
the exquisite pink and 
white blossoms of the 
apple tree and the wild 
roses which bloom in 
such profusion along our 
country roads. It was 
probably as a hybrid of two 
species of small wild crab- 
apples that the apple as 
we know it in history first 
appeared in Asia Minor. 

No fruit can be culti¬ 
vated over so wide an 
area of the globe, and 
none is grown so far 
north. In Europe there 
are apple orchards in 
Scandinavia, and as far 
south as the mountain 
regions of Spain. The' 
apple tree thrives best, 
however, in the middle temperate climates. 

Greatest of Apple Countries 
The United States is the greatest apple country in 
the world. The fruit is extensively cultivated from 
NewBrunswick to the mountains of Georgia and from 
British Columbia to the mountains of Mexico. The 
actual number of varieties produced in North America 
is not far from 1,000, although only about 100 va¬ 
rieties are commercially profitable, and usually not 


Apple Flower 


For any subject not found in its alp habetical place see information 

160 








The King of Fruits 


APRICOT 


more than 20 can be cultivated successfully in any 
one region. Generally speaking, the later or “winter 
apples thrive best farther north, and the earlier 
varieties are better suited to the warmer regions. 

Apple trees were brought to this country about 
1629 by one of the governors of the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony, although there are native species of 
wild crab in America. As the colonists worked their 
way westward they planted 
apple orchards, and Johnny 
Appleseed earned name and 
fame by planting apple seeds 
everywhere he found a fertile 
and well-watered spot in 
Indiana and Ohio. Apple cul¬ 
ture is adapted to all parts of 
the country, with the exception 
of Florida and the lands imme¬ 
diately bordering the Gulf of 
Mexico and the warmer local¬ 
ities of the southwest and 
southern Pacific region. 

New York Ranks First 

The United States produces 
annually about 200,000,000 
bushels of this fruit. New 
York ranks first among the 
states in the production of 
apples, with Michigan second, 

Pennsylvania third, and Mis¬ 
souri fourth. The piedmont region of Virginia has long 
been famous for the delicious apples grown there. 
In the past few years the western states, particularly 
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, have 
undertaken the cultivation of apples on a large scale 


At harvest time the fruit of these great orchards is 
hand picked, graded, wrapped, and carefully packed 
in boxes, and brings high prices in the markets of the 
world as table fruit. 

Apple trees require careful cultivation and the best fruit 
is produced only when every attention is given in the way 
of grafting, pruning, spraying, fertilizing, and the like. 
There are many troublesome diseases to which these trees 
are subject, the most destructive being apple scab and rust, 

both fungous growths. The trees 
are also attacked by numerous 
insects, among them being the 
codlin moth, which lays its eggs 
on the flowers, and the apple-tree 
borer, which attacks the trunk and 
destroys the life of the tree. 

Apples are among the most 
delicious as well as the most whole¬ 
some of fruits. They can be stored 
and kept many months, indeed 
until the early summer varieties of 
the next year are on the market. 
They are also dried, evaporated, 
and canned. Cider is made by 
pressing out the juice of the apple, 
and from this juice the best vinegar 
is made. 

The following are some of the 
best-known varieties: Baldwin, 
Banana, Delicious, Early Harvest, 
Grimes Golden, Jonathan, Maiden 
Blush, Spitzenburg, Northern Spy, 
Rambo, Rhode Island Greening, 
Rome Beauty, Spice Russet, Wine- 
sap, Yellow Bellflower, Ben Davis, 
Duchess, Yellow Transparent. All 
the common species are developed from the Pyrus malus; 
order Rosaceae. 

APRICOT ( a'pri-cdt ). When the first warm breath 
of spring moderates the winter’s chill the fruit buds of 
the apricot trees begin to stir. The dainty shell-pink 


JUST LOADS OF THEM 



This picture tells better than words can do how prolific 
the apricot is. The branches of this tree were so 
loaded—as they usually are—that it was necessary to 
prop them to keep them from breaking down. 


APRICOTS DRYING IN THE SUN 



Here we are looking into one of the orchards in California from which we get the dried apricots we buy at the grocery store. After the 
apricots are picked, they are cut in half and pitted, the two halves turned face up and left to dry on sloping trays. Large quantities of the 
pits are shipped to Europe, where an oil much like almond oil is pressed out from them. 


on irrigated soil, and are raising not only some of the 
choicest varieties of apples grown, but are producing 
a greater number of barrels every j^ear. The apples 
of the west are rich in color, juicy, and of fine flavor. 


blossoms beautify the bare twigs of the mother tree 
long before most other fruits have heard the gentle 
call to waken. Although closely related to the peach 
and plum, the apricot does not survive in the colder 


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AQUARIUM 



1 APRICOT 

regions as do its cousins; this no doubt is mainly 
because of its early-blooming habit. 

Tiny leaves appear soon after the flowers, and when 
the petals have fallen away the tree is covered with 
luxuriant light green foliage. The small green fruits 
grow very slowly until the stone is formed, but after 
the pit has developed they fill out rapidly and ripen 
in the latter part of July and in August. Indeed, the 
name apricot comes from Arabic and late Greek 
words meaning “early ripening.” 

The fruit resembles both the peach and the plum. 
The tree is plumlike in leaf and habit, and peachlike 
in bark. Each tree bears a large quantity of fruit, 
which when fresh has a mild neutral taste, and makes 
excellent marmalade and preserves. When canned or 
dried its flavor is more pronounced, making the 
apricot a general favorite. 

The apricot, of which there are three species, is a 
native of China. It was introduced into Europe in 
the days of Alexander the Great and has been grown 
successfully in California since the early mission days. 
It is now one of the most important of commercial 
fruits in that state. Scientific name, Prunus armeniaca. 
APRIL. The Latin word for April comes from 
one meaning “to open,” and true to its name, the 
month opens the gates that summer may enter. 
April is the fourth month of the year. The variable 
weather of its 30 days, with sudden showers and 
sunshine, has given an added meaning, and April is 
sometimes a synonym for fickleness. So the poet 
William W T atson says: 

April, April, 

Laugh thy girlish laughter; 

And the moment after, 

Weep thy girlish tears! 

On the first day of the month of April it is not safe 
to pick up a bundle or a purse from the pavement, 
for if you do, you’ll find it worthless and be called an 
“April fool.” The custom of playing tricks on this 
day is so old that its origin has been lost. India 
from time immemorial has had its spring festival of 
Huli, ending March 31, in which tricks and pranks 
play a large part. In France such a custom was in 
practice in the 16th century. There the victim was 
called an “April fish”; in Scotland, the name used is 
“April gowk.” 

AQUARIUM. Through the broad Windows of such 
aquariums as the world-famous one at Naples, you 
look from the darkened corridors into huge tanks of 
shimmering water, with light coming from an in¬ 
visible source above. The sights that you see make 
you think you are in Neptune’s palace at the bottom 
of the sea. Before you are the delicate white or pink 
tracery of living tropical corals, the waving red lace- 
work of sea-fans, the greens and browns of kelp and 
algae. Among these polyps and sea plants swim 
fishes of every shape and color. Here is one as round 
and vivid as a Chinese lantern, another as transparent 
as a piece of wriggling glass. Nearby is a gaudy 
swimmer with a hideous head and a delicately beau¬ 


tiful tail, as long and thin as a gossamer veil. Peering 
into a dark rock cave, you meet the ugly stare from 
the eyes of a big octopus, whose black tentacles fade 
off into the shadows; while near him paddles an awk¬ 
ward hook-nosed sea turtle, which the octopus 
knows he cannot harm. Strange snails and slugs 
crawl about on the stones, and anemones flash their 
brilliant hues as they comb the nearby water for food. 

One tank is kept warm for guests from the China 
seas, another is freezing cold for visitors from the 
Arctic. Care also must be shown in keeping in sepa¬ 
rate tanks the strong from the weak, or the whole 
scene would quickly end in tragedy. In Battery 
Park, in New York City, is a similar aquarium which 
contains many and varied specimens of this marvelous 
sea life. 

How to Make a Home Aquarium 

On a smaller scale, any intelligent boy or girl can 
have a home aquarium, but its preparation and 
management, whether fresh-water or marine, requires 
careful and skilled attention. If the animals are 
overcrowded, or if the water is allowed to get too 
warm or too foul, or if too few plants are provided 
to furnish the necessary oxygen, a few hours will 
convert a thriving aquarium into a chamber of horrors 
by killing all the occupants. 

Both plants and animals must be kept in the tank, 
because the fish use up oxygen in the water and throw 
off carbonic acid gas, while plants, on the other 
hand, use up carbonic gas (carbon dioxide) and throw 
off oxygen. In well-kept aquariums the proper 
proportion of plant and animal life is carefully 
maintained, so the plant life will produce enough 
oxygen for the fish and at the same time use up the 
carbonic gas in the water. It is necessary also that 
the aquarium be in a light place, as darkness promotes 
the growth of parasites harmful to fish life, and plants 
give off oxygen only under the influence of light. 
The tank must, however, not be in the direct rays of 
the sun, for direct sunlight overheats the water and 
thus kills the animal life. Many a collection of 
goldfish in the usual round glass globe has been 
killed in a few hours by exposure to sunlight. The 
curved glass focuses the rays of the sun and soon 
scalds the fish to death. Sufficient room must also 
be provided. Each fish three inches long requires at 
least a gallon of water. 

The sides of the best aquariums are of plate glass 
so that the fish may be seen from both sides and the 
top. The frame is of metal and the bottom of metal, 
slate, or marble, covered with sand and pebbles. 

The most convenient size for a home aquarium is 
one holding from three to eight gallons. A five- 
gallon tank will provide room enough for three or 
four fish not more than three inches long, four or five 
of the acrobatic little water newts, three or four small 
tadpoles, six or eight snails, and two or three clams. 
Wholesale drug houses usually stock rectangular or 
cylindrical glass tanks that will be more satisfactory 
than a home-made tank, because it is next to im- 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

162 






Stocking Your Aquarium 



— 

_ AQUEDUCTS 


possible to make one that will not leak in course of 
time. Examine the sides carefully to make sure the 
glass is of good quality, so that it will not distort 
objects. 

To stock it you will need to make a couple of trips 
to some nearby pond. Get your plants the first time 


their nests and hatch their young as freely as in their 
natural surroundings, but you had better put in 
only a single pair because they get very quarrelsome, 
especially with their own species, when they breed 
(see Stickleback). Goldfish, minnows, and Prussian 
carp are also good aquarium fish (see Goldfish). 


STILL CARRYING WATER AFTER NEARLY TWENTY CENTURIES 




The Roman aqueduct at Segovia, Spain, is still carrying water for the people of Segovia, after nearly 20 centuries. Segovia used to he a 
Roman pleasure resort, and this aqueduct is said to have been built in the reign of Trajan. It is still in excellent condition. It is built of 
granite blocks cut from the neighboring mountains, laid without lime or cement. The value of the arch, which the Romans were the first to 
employ extensively, is strikingly shown in this structure. Notice that there are two tiers of arches, one above the other. Some of them 
are 94 feet high. The bridge portion of the aqueduct, where it crosses the valley, is more than 800 yards long, or about a half mile. 


and leave the fish for another trip. The most useful 
plant is the fontinalis or water-moss that grows on 
decayed logs or on stones in the beds of streams. 
Milfoil, hornwort, eel-grass, water thyme, pond weed, 
stoneworts, and the tiny algae are all good. Any pond 
should provide three or four of these plants. If you 
can do so conveniently, take home enough of the 
pond water with you to fill the tank. 

Now put about two inches of coarse gravel in the 
bottom of the tank. Wash it first so that it will not 
muddy the water. A few bits of rock may be put in, 
or an elaborate piece of rock-work, if you want to 
go to the trouble. When you have filled the tank with 
water, anchor the roots of the plants in the gravel, 
or if they fail to take hold, weight them down with 
something heavy. Don’t put in too many; three or 
four vigorous plants are enough. Leave the plants 
to get used to their new home before putting in the 
animals. When the plants are normal you will see 
bubbles of air rising from them. 

Be sure to include a few of the snails found among 
dead leaves on the edges of ponds and ditches, and 
also some of those that live in the slime-covered 
corners. The former will clear your aquarium of the 
dead leaves of water plants and the latter will keep 
the sides and surface free from scum. Sticklebacks 
are interesting little fish to keep, as they will build 


Bits of meat make good food for the tadpoles, 
and the fish will eat bread-crumbs and insects, but 
they get most of their diet from small organisms in 
the water. If pieces of food accumulate on the bot¬ 
tom, remove them by lowering into the tank a glass 
tube, pressing your thumb over one end until it is 
immediately over the object. Lift the thumb, and 
the water with the refuse will rise in the tube and can 
be lifted out by closing your thumb over the end 
again. Keep the level of the water constant, and if 
you have the right balance between animals and plants 
it will rarely need to be changed. Sometimes turbid 
unhealthy water can be purified by dipping it out 
and pouring it slowly back. This mixes air with it. 

Those who live near the seashore can make a salt¬ 
water aquarium in the same way, using oysters, 
mussels, sea clams, shrimps, barnacles, and sea 
minnows for the animals, and sea lettuce and other 
seaweeds for the plants. When the water evaporates 
add fresh water, never sea water, for the salt does not 
evaporate and if you kept adding sea water you 
would soon get a brine that would kill all the plants 
and animals. 

AQUEDUCTS (ak'we-ducts). Even more striking than 
the web of great stone-paved roads with which the 
Romans bound together their empire were the giant 
aqueducts built to bring water to their cities. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

163 











AQUEDUCTS 



Some Remarkable Water Tunnels 


DRIVING A WATER TUNNEL THROUGH THE CATSKILLS 



In order that New York’s thirsty millions may have plenty of pure water, engineers began work in 1917 on a stupendous new rock-hewn 
aqueduct through one of the Catskill ranges. This new tunnel, 18 miles long, was needed to double the supply of the Ashokan reservoir, 
so that the great 92-mile Catskill Aqueduct (described in the text) may be fed to its full capacity of 500 or 600 million gallons a day. 


The city of Rome had 11 such aqueducts, built at 
different times, some with several channels, one above 
another, and ranging in length from a few miles to 
more than 60 miles. The conduits were built for 


A STEEL-PIPE SIPHON 



Six miles of the Catskill Aqueduct consists of so-called inverted 
siphons, which are huge steel pipes following the curves of valleys. 
Notice how the big pipes are first laid on cradles of concrete. Later 
they are lined with cement mortar and covered outside with concrete 
and then with an earth embankment. 

the most part of masonry lined with Roman cement, 
and some of the aqueducts are still in use. Since the 
water flowed entirely by gravitation, the grades were 
carefully surveyed. Here an aqueduct winds grace¬ 
fully around the side of a hill, there another pierces 
boldly through by means of a tunnel, while across the 
low plains near the city itself stalk giant arches 
holding aloft the channel for the precious water high 


in the air. At Nimes in France and Segovia in Spain 
are still to be seen such aqueducts intact, with double 
or triple rows of arches, one row on top of another, 
to lead the level channel across a river or deep valley. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was not 
until the middle of the 18th century that aqueduct¬ 
building was resumed to any great extent. One of 
the chief differences between ancient and modern 
structures is that the modern engineer, with high 
explosives and modern machinery, usually finds it 
quicker and more economical to build a tunnel for 
his water conduit. The application of the principle 
of the siphon, and the use of great pumping engines, 
frees him also of such complete dependence on 
gravitation to bring the water to the city. 

Many modern cities are now supplied with water 
by aqueducts, and a large number of water-power 
developments and irrigation projects also use such 
structures. New York City is furnished with water 
by several aqueducts. The old Croton Aqueduct 
(completed in 1843) and the new Croton (completed 
in 1890) both bring water from the Croton Reservoir 
41 miles north of the city. 

The great Catskill Aqueduct (completed in 1917) 
is the most remarkable water tunnel ever built. It 
is designed to carry between 500 and 600 million 
gallons of water a day from the Catskill Mountains, 
92 miles north of the city limits. It runs under the 
Hudson River and is built at that point over a thou¬ 
sand feet below the surface of the river. At Madison 
Square, in New York, the tunnel lies in rock more than 
200 feet beneath the surface. The tunnels vary from 
11 to nearly 17 feet in diameter and are all lined with 
concrete. 

Los Angeles, Calif., is supplied with water by an 
aqueduct 233 miles long—the longest in the world— 
which brings water from the Owens River in the heart 
of the Sierra Madre Mountains. It supplies more 
water than the city needs, so the surplus is used for 
irrigation, and the great fall in its course supplies 
water-power. 

Other important aqueducts are those used for 
carrying canals across rivers and valleys. The chief 
examples in the United States are those on the Erie 
Canal, 32 in number. The word aqueduct comes from 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 






































Bedouins of the Desert 


ARABIA 


the Latin aqua meaning “ water,” and ducere meaning 
“to lead.” (See Waterworks.) 

Arabia (d -ra'bi-a). Do you know that this penin¬ 
sula of southwestern Asia is larger than all that part 
of the United States which lies east of the Mississippi 
River; that there is not one real river in the whole 
length and breadth of it; that it was the earliest home 
of the Semitic race; that it gave to the world Moham¬ 
medanism, a religion which has spread to the four 


corners of the earth; and that it is the original home 
of the coffee bean, and still produces the purest bred 
horses in the world? All these are facts which entitle 
Arabia to something more than a passing interest. 

The greater part of the interior of Arabia is com¬ 
posed of arid tablelands and vast sandy deserts, 
parched by hot dry winds. In certain districts rain 


practically never falls. The plains along the coast, 
which receive considerable rainfall, are fertile and 
productive, and the same is true of many mountain 
valleys of the southwestern portion—the Arabia 
Felix (“Fortunate Arabia”) of the ancients. There 
are no extensive forests, but here and there through¬ 
out the peninsula there are considerable grasslands 
which furnish excellent pasture for horses. For 
centuries the Arabian horses have been the most 

famous in the 
world. Large num¬ 
bers of camels, 
sheep, goats, and 
cattle are also 
raised. Dates, cof¬ 
fee, bananas and 
other fruits, coco¬ 
nuts, spices, drugs, 
gums, sugar, and 
cotton are the 
chief vegetable 
products. 

Trade is carried 
on chiefly by cara¬ 
vans. A railway, 
however, has been 
built from Damas¬ 
cus to Medina and 
is planned to carry 
pilgrims even to 
Mecca, the most 
holy city of the 
Mohammedan 
faith. 

One-seventh of 
the population of 
Arabia are “Bed¬ 
ouins.” This term 
means “dwellers in 
the desert,” and 
is applied to all 
Arabs who lead a 
wandering life. 
They are herdsmen 
and at times rob¬ 
bers, and recognize 
little law except 
tribal custom. One 
or more families 
form the core of a 
tribe, a kind of 
aristocracy, and 
from their number 
a superior sheik is chosen to lead them and to judge 
between those engaged in disputes, if they choose to 
come to him. They manufacture their own woolen 
clothes, and their food is mainly obtained from their 
herds, though they also eat rice, honey, and on 
occasion locusts and even lizards. 

The history of Arabia really begins with the 



What a panorama unfolds itself to our view in this map! Here we see Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam, 
and Mocha, which sends us our finest coffee. Not far from the northern border are Damascus and Bagdad, 
the enchanted cities of the ‘Arabian Nights’; and in Mesopotamia, northwest of the Persian Gulf, are the ruins 
of ancient Babylon, once the world’s most splendid capital. Notice how the entire western coast has been sep¬ 
arated from the rest of Arabia and made into the new Kingdom of Hejaz, as a reward to the Arabs who fought 
so valiantly for the Allies in the World War. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

165 


















Arabia in the World War 


A VALLEY IN ARABIA AND ITS TERRACED FIELDS 



This is a typical valley in Arabia, which, the map on page 165 shows, is often mountainous. While the greater part of it is desert, there are 
many fertile valleys, especially in the southwest. What appear to be bushes along this little river are really good sized trees. Along the 
bank are cultivated terraces. The Arabs, following the practice of peoples where land is scarce and therefore very precious, have carefully 

cut and leveled the hillsides to form a series of steplike fields. 


Prophet Mohammed, who died in the year 632 a.d. 
He gave the Arabs a new religion in place of their 
former idolatry, and sent them forth to far-reaching 
conquests. Syria, Egypt, and Persia were overcome, 
and Mohammedan 
rule spread over 
northern Africa and 
into Spain. Damas¬ 
cus and Bagdad be¬ 
came the centers of 
an Arabian civiliza¬ 
tion which boasted 
an extensive and 
poetic literature, an 
enlightened philos¬ 
ophy, and an ad¬ 
vanced agriculture 
and industry. 

The coming of 
the barbarian Turks 
from central Asia, in 
the 13th century, 
gradually ended this 
period of prosperity. 

From 1517 on, Ara¬ 
bia for the most part 
was under Turkish 
rule. The south¬ 
eastern portion cen¬ 
tering about the 
town of Muskat was for a time a Portuguese colony, 
and then was under native independent rulers. At 
the entrance to the Red Sea at Aden, and for some 
distance eastward, the British established a hold which 
they still maintain. In addition there were frequent 


and serious revolts of the Arabs against Turkish rule. 
When the World War came (1914-1918), the Arabs 
renewed their revolts, and because Turkey was an 
ally of Germany, Great Britain and France aided 

them. The ruler of 
the chief district of 
western Arabia w-as 
encouraged, in 1916, 
to proclaim his in¬ 
dependence of Tur¬ 
key, with the title 
"King of Hejaz.” 
His troops valiantly 
aided the British in 
driving the Turks 
and Germans from 
Palestine and Syria, 
and in the peace 
conference which 
followed Arabia was 
fully and finally 
freed from Turkish 
rule. 

The Arabian penin¬ 
sula projects in a 
southeasterly direction 
from Syria and Meso¬ 
potamia to the Indian 
Ocean. It is separated 
from Egypt on the 
west by the Red Sea 
and Suez Canal, and from Persia on the east by the Persian 
Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman. Its extent from north to 
south is about 1,500 miles; east to west, 800 to 1,200 miles; 
area, about 1,250,000 square miles; population, about 
6,000,000. The most important political division is the 
new Kingdom of Hejaz, which extends along the Red Sea 


WOMEN OF ARABIA 



Some of the Arabian women of the towns, as you see, are iust as modern in their 
dress as women in England or America. These are the daughters of prosperous 
merchants and have adopted European clothes. The court in which they are stand¬ 
ing is, according to a common Oriental custom, paved with marble laid in mosaic. 

Many of the daughters of well-to-do Arabs are educated in France. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

166 






| Story of Mehemet and Zaidee 



ARABIA 


from a point a little south of Mecca to Syria, with an area 
of about 100,000 square miles. The chief foreign power in 
Arabia is Great Britain, which by its possession of the 
important naval base of Aden, in the southwest corner 
(see Aden), controls the entrance to' the Red Sea, and by 
its protectorate over Koweit, at the head of the Persian Gulf, 
controls the terminus of the Bagdad Railway. Between 


Hejaz and Aden are two little independent governments, the 
Principate of Asir and the Imamate of Yemen. The chief 
port of the latter is Mocha, from which immense crops of 
coffee are exported. In the southeast corner bordering on 
the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman is the Sultanate of 
Oman, famous for its pearl fisheries, and the richest part of 
Arabia in both agricultural and mineral wealth. 




ON’T you want to go on a journey 
to see some children who live in a 
desert? They live very differently 
from any people that you could find 
anywhere else in the world. They have 
two things you like very much—no, 
three. They have sugary dates to eat, 
big humpy camels and dromedaries to ride, 
and ‘Arabian 
Nights’ stories to 
listen to in the 
evenings beneath 
the stars. 

If you want to 
see little Mehemet 
and Zaidee- in 
their tent home in 
Arabia, you must 
call upon them 
very early in the 
morning or after 
the sun goes down. 

From noon until 
four or five o’clock, 
while the burning- 
sun blazes on the 
desert sands, there 
seems to be no 


AN ARAB AT A PUBLIC WATERING PLACE 


It stands on a few acres of grass under some tall 
date-palm trees beside a spring. The spring makes 
a green spot in the desert, an oasis. All around 
that green oasis are miles and miles of dry sand. 
The sand dazzles your eyes, so you think you see 
other oases and palm trees and blue water. But 
these are only air pictures that fade away (see Mirage). 
The sand is blown up by the wind in great drifts, 

like snow. In the 
shadows of these 
drifts and of big 
rocks, camels and 
sheep and goats 
lie asleep. The 
herders and sheep 
dogs are asleep. 
among them. 

If you should 
lift the door flap of 
the tent you would 
see a white curtain 
hung across the 
middle. This di¬ 
vides the big tent 
into two rooms. 
The men and boys 
are in one room, 


... , , Water is so scarce in Arabia that the wealthy Arabs consider that one of the things most . ‘ d 

One Stirring about pleasing to Mohammed, the author of their faith, is to establish public watering places girls in the Other. 

. — such as the one you see here, beside which the Arab is resting and enjoying his long- tx ; j 1 j i 

stemmed pipe. Do you wonder that he loves that horse? CiarK ailQ Cool¬ 

er inside the tent. 

feet long, because the father of these children is You must step softly, for everyone is asleep. They 
a sheik, or Arab chief. It is covered with brown lie on colored mats and saddlebag cushions. These 
camel’s hair cloth, or with goat skins. are made of Oriental or Eastern rugs. Americans 


the big tent. The 
tent is quite 40 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the 

167 


end of this 


work 


/ 




















































‘ARABIAN NIGHTS’ 


ARABIA 

buy these rugs for their very best rooms if they have 
enough money. The Arab chief buys them in the 
Turkish city where he goes to sell his camels and his 
wool. He has had to pay a good deal for them, but 
they will wear several lifetimes. Besides, they are 
the only kind of beds and seats he can carry with 
him. He has to move about a good deal, to find food 
and water for his animals. 

Every one is asleep but Saladin, the master’s 
Arabian horse. Saladin stands beside his sleeping 
master in the tent. He is slender and dainty. His 
coat is like black satin. He holds up his proud head 
on his arched neck. He stamps his little polished 
hoofs on the sand. Saladin is the family pet. He is 
very gentle. He skims over the desert like a bird 
with his master on his neck, and has wonderful power 
of endurance. Mehemet gave him some dates to eat 
before he went to sleep. Zaidee kissed his black nose. 

At sunset a cool breeze blows across the desert. 
Everybody wakes up. Mother brings her loom, and 
sits on a mat outside the tent to weave camel’s hair 
cloth. The herdsmen milk the camels and goats. 
A servant woman makes Mocha coffee. It is the best 
coffee in the world, and is grown in Arabia. The 
children drink goat’s milk. They all eat crisp bread 
made in cakes like our crackers. It is made of wheat, 
barley, or millet seed flour, and is baked on hot 
stones. They eat a stew of goat’s flesh or mutton. 
For dessert they eat dates and perhaps almonds. 

Why Pretty Zaidee is So Dark 

Zaidee is very pretty. She would not be so very, 
dark but the hot sun has burned her as brown as a 
gypsy. Her hair is black and straight. Her soft eyes 
are the color of brown velvet. She wears wide 
trousers and a loose gown of blue cotton. On her 
head is a blue cloth, bound into a long-tailed bonnet- 
cap, with a band of goat’s hair. She has copper and 
silver bracelets on her arms and ankles, and strings 
of glass beads. Her brother wears a long white shirt 
with a leather girdle, and a white cotton bonnet bound 
with goat’s hair. When they walk on the sharp hot 
sand, they both put on leather sandals. The father 
wears a white turban made of many folds of thin 
stuff wound around his head. He smokes a pipe. 

Sometimes, as the family sits in the starlight, the 
father or mother tells stories like those you read in 
the ‘Arabian Nights’. The Arabs with their poetic 
imaginations have made up the most wonderfully 
colored and fanciful stories of any people in the world. 
Their stories are full of the splendors of palaces and 
princes. They sparkle with jewels and are woven of 
magio-. The children of every people in the world 
listen to these stories with wide wondering eyes. 
Perhaps, too, that is why the desert people love the 
many-colored, gaily patterned rugs. Spread on the 
sand they look like flower beds. 

As soon as the moon is up, the herders take down 
the big tent. The water is dwindling in the spring, 
the grass is almost gone. The family must move to 
a better pasture. They must go at night, when it is 


cool. Everything is packed on the kneeling camels. 
Skin bags are filled with water, and bread and dates 
are made ready for the journey. One by one the 
animals take a last drink at the spring. The camels 
fill the little water pockets in their stomachs, to last 
for several days. 

Saladin, the proud bearer of his long-bearded, 
white-turbaned master, leads the procession. Then 
come the women and children on the riding drome¬ 
daries. The freight camels follow with their drivers; 
the brown herders and dogs drive the sheep and goats. 
The moon is a silver crescent in the dark blue sky. 
The stars are little high, white lamps. The padded 
feet of the camels make no sound. They swing and 
rock like ships across the sea of sand. Perhaps that is 
why camels are called ships of the desert. 

The procession grows smaller and dimmer in the 
distance. Now it goes over a great ridge of drifted 
sand and disappears. Mehemet and Zaidee are gone. 
But you will never forget this vast plain of white 
6and under the clear blue sky. It lies there so wide 
and silent and lonely, under the silver light of the 
moon and stars. 

‘Arabian NIGHTS’. A sultan of the Indies who 
was disappointed in love had made a vow to take a 
new wife every day and put her to death the following 
morning. To stop this cruel practice Scheherazade 
( she-ha-ra-za'de ), the beautiful daughter of the grand 
vizier, becomes the sultan’s bride. She is a gifted 
narrator of stories and arranges for her sister to come 
before dawn and beg that she be permitted to tell one 
last story before her execution. This is done, and 
Scheherazade breaks off her tale at so interesting a 
point that the sultan spares her life until the next 
night, in order that he may hear the story’s end. So 
it continues for a thousand nights. Meanwhile 
Scheherazade bears the sultan a son. Presenting him 
to her lord, she tells him of the craft she has used, and 
the sultan, who has grown to love his wise and beauti¬ 
ful bride as well as to look forward to her stories, 
abandons his vow and lets her live. 

This, in a few words, is the framework of ‘The 
Arabian Nights, or Tales of the Thousand and One 
Nights’, the most famous book in Arabian literature. 
It has been translated into many languages, and has 
probably been read more than any other book of tales 
ever written. The stories of Aladdin and his Wonder¬ 
ful Lamp, of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, of 
Sinbad the Sailor and the Old Man of the Sea, with 
their incidents of adventure, of magic, and boundless 
treasure, are among the most prized possessions of 
literature. 

The basis of the collection was translations of tales 
from the Hindu through the Persian. To those were 
added many other stories originating in Bagdad and 
in Egypt. Many of the tales deal with the times of 
the great Calif Harun-al-Raschid (786-808), the con¬ 
temporary of Charlemagne. They all have value for 
the light which they throw upon Arabian civiliza¬ 
tion at its highest point. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

168 







I The Treasure Under the Stone 



‘ARABIAN NIGHTS 



THE STORY OF ALADDIN AND THE 
WONDERFUL LAMP 

ONG long ago there lived in the capital 
of China a young boy, Aladdin, the son 
of a very poor widow. One day as he 
played in the street with his companions, 
a stranger who was passing stopped and spoke to him. 

“Child, was not your father called Mustapha the 
tailor?” he asked. 

‘Yes, sir,” answered Aladdin, “but he has been 
dead a long time.” 

At these words the stranger threw his arms about 
Aladdin’s neck, kissed him several times, and with 
tears in his eyes said: 

“I am your uncle; your worthy father was my own 
brother. I knew you at first sight, you are so like 
him.” 

He then gave the boy a handful of money, saying: 
“Go, my son, to your mother. Give my love to her 
and tell her that I will visit her tomorrow, that I may 
see where my good brother lived so long and ended his 
days.” 

Aladdin’s mother was much surprised to learn that 
her husband had a brother, but she rejoiced with her 
son at the good fortune which had come to him, for 
the stranger promised to buy Aladdin a shop, and 
to dress him as handsomely as the best merchants 
in the city. 

Early the next morning the stranger called to take 
Aladdin into the country to spend the day. After 
walking some distance they reached a narrow valley 
between two mountains. Here Aladdin’s companion 
paused and bade him gather up all the dry sticks he 
could find. These the stranger set on fire. Then, 
pouring some incense into the blaze, he pronounced 
several magical words, and immediately the earth 
opened, disclosing a stone with a brass ring fixed in it. 
Aladdin was greatly frightened, and would have run 


away; but the stranger caught hold of him and said: 

“Do not be afraid. Under this stone there is 
hidden a treasure destined to be yours, and which 
will make you richer than the greatest monarch in 
the world. Take hold of the ring and lift up the 
stone.” 

Aladdin did as he was told; and there appeared 
under the stone a staircase leading down to a door. 

“Descend those steps, my son, and open that door,” 
said the stranger. “It will lead you into a palace 
divided into three great halls. Before you enter the 
first hall be sure to tuck up your robe and wrap it 
about you, for if your clothes so much as touch the 
wall you will die instantly. Then pass through the 
second and third halls without stopping. At the end 
of the third you will find a. door which opens into a 
garden, planted with fine trees loaded with fruit. 
Walk directly across the garden to a terrace, where 
you will see in a niche a lighted lamp. Take the lamp 
down and put it out. When you have thrown away 
the wick and poured out the oil, put it in your waist¬ 
band and bring it to me.” 

The stranger then drew a ring off his finger and 
putting it on one of Aladdin’s said: “This is a talisman 
against all evil, so long as you obey me. Go, there¬ 
fore, boldly, and we shall both be rich all our lives.” 

Where Jewels Grew on Trees 

Aladdin followed the stranger’s instructions; but 
as he was returning with the lamp, he noticed that 
the fruit of the treeswas composed of what he imagined 
to be colored glass, though in reality these bits of 
glass were beautiful jewels of every description. He 
filled his purse and his skirts with them; and, loaded 
with riches of which he little realized the value, he 
returned to the mouth of the cave and cried out: 
“Pray, uncle, lend me your hand to help me out.” 

The stranger, however, insisted that Aladdin give 
him the lamp first. But the latter whose hands were 
filled with jewels refused. At that the stranger flew 
into a passion, threw some incense into the fire, 
and spoke two magical words—at which the stone 
rolled back into place, imprisoning the boy in the 
gloomy cave. 

Aladdin then realized that the stranger was no 
uncle of his, but a wicked magician who designed 
him evil. And this indeed was true, for he was 
known as the African magician, and had come from 
his native land for the express purpose of obtaining 
the magic lamp. An oracle had revealed to him its 
whereabouts, and had further stated that the lamp 
must be given to him as a gift from the hands of 
another if he would obtain favors from it. It was 
for this reason that he had prevailed upon Aladdin 
to secure his prize. 

Aladdin’s cries for help echoed and re-echoed 
through the dark cave, unheard by anyone. Worn 
out at last he joined his hands to pray, and in doing 
so rubbed the ring which the magician had placed on his 
finger. Immediately there rose from the earth a fright¬ 
ful Jinn or spirit bearing a torch in his hand, who said: 


f 9 nt ai n e d in the E a * y Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hit work 

169 







































‘ARABIAN NIGHTS’ 



The Trick the Magician Played ( 



“What wouldst 
thou have? I am 
ready to obey 
thee. I serve him 
who possesses the 
ring on thy finger; 
I, and the other 
slaves of the ring.” 

Although greatly 
frightened, Alad¬ 
din replied “Who¬ 
ever thou art, 
deliver me from 
this place.” 

No sooner had 
he spoken than 
he found himself 
on the very spot where the magician had left him, 
while no sign of the cave remained. He quickly 
made his way home, and after relating to his mother 
all that had happened he asked for some food. 

“Alas, child,” she replied; “I have not a bit of 
bread in the house, nor have we money to buy any.” 

Aladdin thereupon suggested selling the lamp, and 
his mother agreed, but wished first to clean it. No 
sooner had she begun to rub it than there appeared 
another hideous Jinn who roared in a voice of thunder: 

“What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey 
thee as thy slave, and the slave of all those who have 
that lamp in their hands.” 

Greatly terrified, Aladdin’s mother fainted; but 
Aladdin quickly seized the lamp and said boldly: 

“ I am hungry. Bring me something to eat.” 

The Jinn disappeared, and presently returned 
bearing a large silver tray holding 12 covered silver 
dishes filled with delicious food, two flagons of wine, 
and two silver goblets. In their humble cottage the 
mother and son then partook of a feast fit for a king. 

In spite of the fact that they had an inexhaustible 
source of riches in the lamp, and that Aladdin had 
come to realize the value of the “glass stones” which 
he had brought home, he and his mother continued 
to live very simply. One day, however, as Aladdin 
was strolling about the town he chanced to see the 
beautiful Princess Buddir al Buddoor, the daughter 
of the sultan. Charmed by her grace and beauty, he 
fell deeply in love with her, and resolved to win her 
in spite of his humble station. 

Hastening home, he commissioned his mother to 
take all his jewels as a gift to the sultan and ask of 
him the hand of the Princess for her son. The sultan 
was amazed at the beauty of the gems, and replied 
without hesitation: 

“Go tell your son that I wait with open arms to 
embrace him; and the more haste he makes to come 
and receive the Princess, my daughter, from my 
hands, the greater pleasure he will do me.” 

Aladdin, overjoyed at his mother’s success, sum¬ 
moned the Jinn of the lamp and said: 

“Jinn, build me a palace of porphyry, jasper, agate, 

For any subject not found in its 


lapis lazuli, and the finest marble. Let its walls be 
of massive gold and silver bricks, and let the lattices 
of the windows be enriched with diamonds, rubies, 
and emeralds. Let there be an inner and an outer 
court, and beautiful gardens. But above all things 
provide a safe treasure-house and fill it with gold and 
silver. Let there be also kitchens and storehouses, 
stables full of the finest horses, with their masters and 
grooms, and hunting equipage, officers, attendants 
and slaves, both men and women, to form a retinue 
for the Princess and myself.” 

The next day the marriage was celebrated with 
great splendor and ceremony, and Aladdin led his 
Princess to the wonderful palace built overnight by 
the Jinn. 

Several years later the magician, who had returned 
to Africa after imprisoning Aladdin in the cave, 
decided to learn whether Aladdin had perished. He 
set out for the capital of China and soon after arriving 
learned of the boy’s wealth and happiness. Filled 
with rage, he bided his time until Aladdin one day 
went hunting. Then purchasing 12 bright new 
lamps, he walked past the palace crying: 

“New lamps for old! Who will exchange old lamps 
for new?” 

The Princess, who heard him, sent one of her slaves 
to fetch an old lamp which she had noticed in her 
husband’s robing room, and bade her exchange it for 
a new one. Little did she realize that this old lamp 
was the source of all their wealth and prosperity! 
The magician snatched the lamp eagerly, summoned 
the Jinn, and ordered the palace and all its occupants 
to be transported into the heart of Africa. 

The Princess, the Palace, and All! 

Aladdin was frantic when, upon his return, he 
learned that his palace and his Princess had dis¬ 
appeared with a clap of thunder. The sultan, very 
angry at the disappearance of his daughter, at first 
ordered Aladdin put to death; but he finally agreed 
to allow him 40 days in which to find her. In his 
grief Aladdin forgot the 
magic ring upon his finger, 
until he accidentally rub¬ 
bed it, whereupon its at¬ 
tendant spirit appeared. 

“Transport my palace 
to the place where it first 
stood,” commanded Alad¬ 
din. 

“Only the Jinn of the 
lamp can do that,” replied 
the spirit. 

“Then I command thee, 
by the power of the ring, 
to transport me to the 
spot where my palace now 
stands.” 

At once Aladdin found 
himself in the presence of 
Princess Buddir al Bud- 

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ALADDIN AND THE BEAUTIFUL BUDDIR AL BUDDOOR 




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“One day as Aladdin was strolling about the town he chanced to see the beautiful Princess Buddir al Buddoor, the daughter of the sultan. 
Charmed by her grace and beauty, he fell deeply in love with her, and resolved to win her in spite of his humble station.” 

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‘ ARABIAN NIGHTS’ 


ARBITRATION 



door, who told him all that had befallen. Learning 
that the wicked magician kept the lamp always in 
his waistband, Aladdin formed a plan for its recovery. 
He had the Princess invite the magician to dine with 
her that night. Then, purchasing a powder which 
would mean instant death to anyone who swallowed 
it, he gave it to the Priqcess to put in her guest’s 
wine goblet. Aladdin hid under the table during the 
repast, and as the magician drank his wine and 
instantly fell forward senseless, he sprang out, 
snatched the lamp, and quickly rubbed it. 

“Jinn,” he cried, “I command thee to transport 
this palace instantly to the place from which it was 
brought hither.” 

Immediately the palace and its occupants were 
carried back to China. There joy and gladness 
succeeded grief and mourning at court, and the happy 
sultan, as he embraced his daughter, begged Aladdin’s 
forgiveness for his distrust of him. 

Within a few years the sultan died at a good old 
age, and since he left no male children, the Princess 
Buddir al Buddoor succeeded him, and she and 
Prince Aladdin reigned together in great prosperity 
for many years .—Retold from ‘The Arabian Nights’. 

AR AL, Sea of. With the exception of the Caspian 
Sea, about 150 miles to the east, the Sea of Aral is the 
largest body of water in Asia. Indeed, it is one of the 
largest inland bodies of water in the world, its area 
(about 26,000 square miles) being somewhat larger 
than that of Lake Michigan. Geographers believe 
that it was much larger at one time, and was con¬ 
nected with the Caspian. The water is slightly salt, 
but the fish belong to fresh water species. Its two 
tributaries are the ancient Jaxartes (Syr-Daria) and 
Oxus (Amu). The shores are practically uninhabited, 
owing to the fact that it is almost entirely surrounded 
by steppes, rocky plateaus, and swamps. In spite of 
its comparative shallowness, navigation is made 
dangerous by violent storms. 

ARBITRATION. Two neighbors quarreled over the 
boundary between their farms. One claimed that 
the fence belonged just where it was. The other 
contended that it was on his land, and should be 
moved over two rods in his neighbor’s direction. 
Bitter words passed between them. Finally one took 
the matter into court, where each presented his 
claims and a jury decided the matter. 

Two nations—the United States and Mexico— 
quarreled over the boundary between their lands. 
The United States claimed that the dividing line 
was the Rio Grande, while Mexico contended that 
it was the Nueces River, some hundred miles to the 
eastward. Bitter messages followed, and finally 
the two nations engaged in a war which cost thousands 
of dollars and hundreds of lives, to determine where 
lay the boundary. 

About 50 years later two nations—this time Great 
Britain and Venezuela—were involved in a quarrel 
over the dividing line between Venezuela and British 



Guiana. Each side meant to take the territory it 
claimed, but just when war seemed inevitable, Great 
Britain acting upon the suggestion of the United 
States offered to let an impartial commission made up 
of men from different countries decide where the 
boundary line should be. The claims of both coun¬ 
tries were heard, just as in the case between the two 
men mentioned above, and the dispute was settled 
by arbitration instead of by war. 

Uncle Sam as a Peacemaker 

The United States has taken the lead in urging 
the peaceful settlement of quarrels between nations 
by arbitration and has frequently submitted its own 
disputes to the decision of arbitrators. Eighty-three 
disputes between the United States and some 24 dif¬ 
ferent countries have thus been settled in friendly 
fashion by some form of arbitration. Many of these 
cases have been with Great Britain, and they include 
the settlement by arbitration of the northeast bound¬ 
ary of the United States, the boundary in the inlet 
to Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, the conflicting 
interests of the two countries in the Newfoundland 
fisheries and the sealing in Bering Sea, and—most 
important of all—the Alabama claims (see “Alabama” 
Clams). It is said that altogether there were only 
6 cases of arbitration in the 18th century, but 471 in 
the 19th century. 

The United States has also set an example in mak¬ 
ing treaties with other countries in which each agrees 
beforehand to use arbitration in any disputes which 
may arise, before resorting to war. By 1914, when 
the World War broke out, such treaties had been 
made with more than half the nations of the world. 

The cause of international peace was further 
advanced by the Hague court of arbitration estab¬ 
lished by the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 
1907. But this could act only when both parties to a 
dispute agreed to refer it to that tribunal. A more 
important step was the formation in 1919 of the 
League of Nations, with a constitution providing that 
the nations which become members must attempt to 
settle their quarrels by arbitration or other peaceful 
means before resorting to war, and establishing a 
permanent court to hear such cases. In this way we 
are realizing the dream of the poet Tennyson, of a 
time when— 

The war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags 
were furled 

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. 

Arbitration and the Labor Problem 

Arbitration is as useful also in settling disputes 
between employer and employee—labor and capital— 
as it is in preserving peace between nations. Its 
use has prevented or settled many bitter strikes and 
saved hundreds of thousands of dollars to employers 
and men, and untold suffering to the wives and chil¬ 
dren of the latter. It is also a powerful weapon to 
safeguard the interests of the public. For instance 
in 1902 the anthracite coal miners asked for higher 
wages, and when their demands were refused they 


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172 


For any subject not found in its 






struck. As a result, many factories were forced to 
close down for lack of coal, and thousands of work¬ 
ingmen were out of work. Conditions finally be¬ 
came so bad that President Roosevelt forced the mine 
operators to submit the dispute to the arbitration of a 
commission which he appointed. 

Australia and New Zealand have led the world in 
legislation which forces employers and employees to 
submit their disputes to the compulsory arbitration 
of courts in which both sides are represented. Heavy 
fines and other penalties are provided for strikes or 
lockouts in violation of its provisions. 

ARBOR day. The idea of setting apart an annual 
day for planting trees was born on the treeless plains 
of Nebraska. J. Sterling Morton, who later became 
United States Secretary of Agriculture, realizing what 
value, beauty, and comfort trees would add to his 
state, induced the authorities of Nebraska to proclaim 
the first Arbor Day, in 1872. Over 1,000,000 trees 
were planted at that time, and April 22, Mr. Morton’s 
birthday, was later set aside for annual repetition of 
such tree-planting and made a state holiday. 

Arbor Day is now observed in most of the states. 
In many it is a legal holiday, and in others its 
observance is general though there is no legal enact¬ 
ment. The date depends on the climate of the 
different sections. 

In addition to the planting of trees, Arbor Day is 
now made an occasion to impress upon the people of 
the nation, young and old, the responsibility that 
rests on them to beautify their yards, neighborhoods, 
parks, and public grounds. It is also intended to 
cultivate an appreciation for natural beauty, espe¬ 
cially for trees, such as inspired Joyce Kilmer, the 
martyred soldier-poet, when he wrote: 

I think that I shall never see 

A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day, 

And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in summer wear 

A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me, 

But only God can make a tree. 

Arbu tus, Trailing. One of the loveliest of our 
early wild flowers is this brave little blossom of the 
heath family, whose buds are formed in the fall, all 
ready to come forth while yet another snowstorm 
may be expected. It is found from the Newfoundland 
woods south to Florida and westward to Kentucky, 
abounding in the northern pine forests of the Middle 
West. 

In New England, where the arbutus is especially 
loved, it is called the “Mayflower,” and in the 
southern states the ground laurel. It thrives best 
in densely shaded mossy woods, where the soil is 


sandy or rocky. It clings closely to the ground 
under dried leaves, grass, and pine needles. 

At the time of blossoming, the contrast between 



The Trailing Arbutus 

the time-worn and rusty ever¬ 
green leaves and the clustering 
waxy-pink flowers, with their 
rarely delicate beauty and exqui¬ 
site fragrance, is a source of 
constant delight. After the spring 
rains the new leaves appear and show glossy green; 
the finest specimens of both flower and foliage are to 
be found at this time. 

In gathering arbutus, every true lover of nature 
will take care not to uproot the plant, and will pluck 
only a few sprays. This lovely little wild flower is 
growing scarcer each year, and attempts to transplant 
it to our gardens are almost never successful. 

Whittier’s poem describes the arbutus as the first 
wild flower to greet the Pilgrims after they landed at 
Plymouth: 


“Yet God be praised!” the Pilgrim said, 
Who saw the blossoms peer 
Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, 
“Behold our Mayflower here!” 


Scientific name, Epigaea repens. Flowers have calyx of 
5 over-lapping sepals, with slender hairy tubelike corolla 
(blossom) spreading into 5 equal lobes; 10 stamens; 1 pistil. 
Stem is slender, rusty-brown, leafy, and hairy. The rusty, 
evergreen leaves are oval, smooth above and hairy beneath. 

ARCADIA. In the beautiful land of Arcadia light¬ 
hearted shepherds and shepherdesses spend all their 
days in joyous dance or wandering through green 
meadows beneath the fairest of skies. Nowhere is 
there misery or wickedness, and all are young and 
fair. For centuries poets have delighted to picture 
such a land, peopled by a race— 

With nature pleased, content with present case, 

Free of proud fears, brave beggary, smiling strife 
Of climb-fall court, the envy-hatching place. 

Arcadia in this sense is a wholly imaginary country. 


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ARCADIA 


ARCHIMEDES 


But in Greece, on the central plateau of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus, there is a real Arcadia, from which this fabled 
land of romance received its name. Shut off from the 
coast on all sides by high mountains, its people in 
ancient days lived simple pastoral lives untouched 
by the progress that marked the rest of Greece. 
There was no immigration, and customs and dialect 
remained for centuries unchanged. The name 
Arcadia thus came to be a symbol of ideal simplicity 
and happiness. Today the population remains sparse, 
although the district now extends to the Gulf of 
Nauplia and has a seacoast of about 40 miles. Much 
of it is forested and the soil mostly unproductive. 
Arch. Why is it 


THE KEYSTONE AND THE ARCH 


and form really one big curved stone without any 
loose joints to give way under the side thrust. 

Stone arches are usually built first over a wooden 
framework which holds them up until the middle 
stone is dropped in place. This middle stone is 
called the keystone, because it locks the entire arch. • 
When the arch principle is extended over an entire 
room or passageway, it is called a vault. The roof of 
a tunnel is a vault. If a vault is perfectly round, like 
the half of an orange, it is called a dome. In each 
case the same law applies. Pressure on any part of 
the curved surface is transmitted along the curve. 
The arch has played an important part in archi¬ 
tecture since very 



that a barrel won’t 
break as easily as 
a box? Why are 
bridges built in high 
curves, and why are 
the roofs of tunnels 
rounded? You know 
how hard it is to 
crack a walnut, and 
that you can squeeze 
the thin sides of an 
egg pretty hard be¬ 
fore the shell crushes 
in, but can you tell 
the reason? _ 

All this Strength Here we have pictured the construction of an arch. A “voussoir,” as you can see, 
of hollow things > s of the same shape as the keystone, and a kind of “first assistant” in holding up 

. , . . the arch. The “abutment” is the part of the wall that receives the side thrust. 

With Curving sides while “impost” is the name given to the part of the wall from which the arch springs. 
, no ». „„ _ Beneath it is the “pier.” The greatest width of the arch is called the “span,” while 

rests on a principle the distance between the span and the bottom of the keystone is the “rise.” 

discovered thous¬ 
ands of years ago—the principle of the arch. It is 
used everywhere—in buildings and bottles, in electric 
light globes and the bottoms of ships, in almost every¬ 
thing which has to stand rough usage and pressure 
from the outside. 

To understand this principle, let’s consider it in 
one of its simplest forms—the ordinary building arch 
of stone, such as you often see over windows and 
doors. 

Why don’t the stones in the middle of the arch fall 
through? The reason is that they are wedge-shaped, 
and while they are forced down by the weight above 
them, they push against the stones next to them. These 
pass on the pressure to the stones on each side of the 
curve and to the perpendicular sides of the door or 
window. Each stone in this way helps to hold up 
every other stone. The only way the arch could fall 
through would be if it pushed the sides of the window 
or door apart. This tendency of arches to push out 
against their supports is called thrust. 

Thrust may be overcome in one of two ways— 
either by having the arch supports so heavy that 
they can’t be pushed over, as in the case of the window 
or door, whose sides are the walls of the building 
itself; or by making the arch one solid piece with 
cement or concrete, so that the stones stick together 


ancient times. The 
Egyptians used it in 
their smaller build¬ 
ings. The Greeks 
knew about the arch 
but made little use 
of it. The Romans 
employed it con¬ 
stantly in their 
great structures, 
and many of the 
great triumphal 
arches which they 
built as ornaments 
nearly 2,000 years 
ago are still stand¬ 
ing. 

Archimedes (ar- 

kl-me’dez) (287-212 
b.c.). “Give me a 
place to stand and to rest my lever on,” said this 
ancient Greek mathematician and inventor, “and 
I can move the earth.” 

At another time, it is said, Archimedes ran naked 
through the streets of his native city, crying “Eureka! 
Eureka!”—which is Greek for, “I have found it.” 
The ruler of that city had ordered a goldsmith to make 
a crown of pure gold; and suspecting that the gold¬ 
smith had cheated him by dishonestly adding alloy, 
he handed the crown to Archimedes and asked him 
to find out if this was so. Archimedes discovered the 
solution to the problem by observing the amount of 
water displaced by his own body while taking a bath. 
It was this observation which caused him absent- 
mindedly to run home, without his clothes, to try 
the same experiment with the crown. 

Archimedes proved that the goldsmith was dis¬ 
honest. At the same time he proved this principle 
of the science of mechanics: “That a body immersed 
in a fluid loses as much in weight as the weight of an 
equal volume of the fluid.” 

Not only was Archimedes the greatest mathema¬ 
tician and writer on the science of mechanics among 
the ancients; he was in addition their greatest in¬ 
ventor. He was the first to realize the enormous power 
that can be exerted by means of a lever. He also 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

174 

















Even if you did not know that this is the great Archimedes, you would feel sure that the subject was some great man, wouldn't you—with 
that splendid head, that intellectual face, and those bent brows concentrated in thought? The habit of intense concentration on one line 
of thought is characteristic of all great men. An anecdote of Socrates, for example, is to the effect that he sat a whole day in the market¬ 
place meditating on some idea that engaged his attention. It is easy to imagine then that such a man should be so absorbed in a problem 
that he wouldn’t realize that his life was in danger, and would resent the coarse interruption of the brutal Roman soldier with,“Don’t 

disturb my circles!” 


1 A Great Inventor, Too 


ARCHIMEDES 


invented the compound pulley, and a spiral screw for 
raising water and other substances which is still 
widely used and is called “Archimedes’ screw.” The 
principle of this screw is illustrated by the ordinary 
kitchen meat grinder, in which the wide spiral blade 
is inclosed in a cylinder so that whatever is put in 
at one end is forcibly drawn against the grinding 
teeth. Another example of Archimedes’ great inven¬ 
tion is found in the winding thread of a carpenter’s 
auger. When a hole is being bored, this thread con¬ 
veys to the surface and out of the way the chips and 
shavings cut off by the point deep down in the wood. 


When Syracuse, in Sicily (his native city), was 
besieged by the Romans he invented new war engines 
for its defense, and suggested a method for using 
burning glasses to set fire to the besieging ships. The 
Romans took the city, but only after a siege of three 
years. Archimedes was slain in the massacre which 
followed. It is said that what particularly angered 
the Roman soldiery was that when they burst into his 
house, Archimedes was absorbed in contemplation 
of mathematical figures which he had drawn on the 
sand. To the soldier who interrupted him, he merely 
said,“Don’t disturb my circles.” 


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1 A R C H I T E C T U R~E 


Monuments of Tyranny | 



Did you know that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh 
was almost as tall as the Wcolworth Building and 
far greater in bulk? But height and bulk do not 
measure civilization. The pyramid was built by 
slaves for a tyrant. The sky-scraper was built by 
free men for their own use. There’s the progress. 


ARCHITECTURE, the OLDEST of the ARTS 

TT/'HEN you look at a great sky-scraper shooting up toward the clouds, do you ever stop 
rr t 0 think that it typifies the rush and energy of modern life? Have you ever read in it 
the story it has to tell of concentrated usefulness and efficiency, of great tasks boldly under¬ 
taken and rapidly accomplished, of busy industry and trade, and steel and machinery and 
harnessed electricity? Someone has said that the sky-scraper “writes in letters of stone the 
20th century spirit of the American nation” In this article you may read the wonderful history 
of man as a builder, in all ages, from the days of the ancient Egyptians down to modern times. 

sun-dried bricks. But they too constructed temples 
and palaces on a huge scale, the former in the shape 
of great tapering towers rising from the flat plains, 
the latter usually in the form of fortresses. Since 
the dwellers of western Asia were more exposed to 
attacks of their neighbors than were the Egyptians, 
much of their architecture consisted in building huge 
walls with turrets and battlements around their 
cities. And since bricks could be laid in more varied 
shapes than the unwieldy stones of the Egyptians, 
we find more curved and broken lines in Babylonian 
buildings. They made great use of the arch, which 
the architects of the Nile seldom employed in their 
larger structures. 

The Assyrians, to the north of the Babylonians, 
copied the architecture of the latter on an even larger 
scale, and introduced stone masonry. They learned, 
moreover, to decorate their walls with designs of 
glazed brick in varied colors—an art invented by 
the Egyptians. Their skill in turn was passed on to 
the Chaldeans, or later Babylonians. These, under 
the great Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar, developed 
the most magnificent buildings that men had ever 
seen, and Babylon with its temples, palaces, and hang¬ 
ing gardens became one of the wonders of the world. 

The Persians, who conquered Assyria and Baby¬ 
lonia and later invaded Egypt, combined the arts of 
all three countries in huge palaces of brick and stone, 
using the round columns as well as the square towers, 
and adding elaborate decorations of their own. 

But the architecture of these Asiatic nations, like 
that of Egypt, rested on a basis of tyranny and 
slavery. The freedom of their art was choked as was 
the freedom of their people, and the chief aim was to 
make buildings bigger and bigger, without much 
improvement of form or addition of real beauty. 
Greek Architecture and Greek Culture 
During these same early centuries, however, a far 
greater and more fruitful art was being developed 
on the coasts and islands of the Aegean Sea, and 
reached its height on the island of Crete. Nearly 
2,000 years before the Christian era the Cretan builder 
had already learned the most difficult lesson of 
architecture. He knew how to 'plan a structure so 
it would “come out right.” The ruins of the great 
palace at Cnossus show with what skill the architects 
of Crete could bring together, in beautiful and regular 
arrangement under one roof, many rooms, halls, and 
passageways. Egyptian architecture reached its 
highest expression in tombs and monuments to the 


A rchitecture. 

The tendency of 
buildings to reflect the 
lives and 
thoughts of 
the people 
who build 
them has 
existed in 
all ages, 
and it is 
this com¬ 
bination of 
building- 

science with fine art that we call architecture. 

The building problems of the earliest savages left 
little room for art, for their homes were simple dens 
of refuge and warmth, like the caves of Cro-Magnon 
and the snow-huts of the Eskimo. The earliest great 
architecture is that of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 
and it is among their ruins that our history begins. 
Egyptian Monuments of Tyranny 
What do those tremendous pyramids and temples 
left by the old Egyptians tell us? In the first place 
their vast size and stupendous weight of masonry 
show us that the architects were in the grip of a 
powerful awe-inspiring religion. There is no idea of 
shelter or daily usefulness in these structures. They 
are the tombs of kings and habitations for the gods. 
They tell us of millions of poor people ground under 
the heel of a monstrous tyranny—hewing great 
masses of granite and sandstone with small hand- 
chisels in distant quarries, transporting them many 
miles with the most primitive means, and carving and 
polishing them by hand into columns, gigantic 
obelisks, and great building blocks. “Slavery” is 
written in bold letters across every one of these 
structures. Tens of thousands of workers were born 
in their mud huts, grew old in bitter labor under the 
fierce African sun, and died, while a single pyramid 
was raised to gratify a proud and ruthless Pharaoh. 

So there is little of delicate beauty or skilful design 
in Egyptian architecture. It is mostly the brute force 
of building, and the decoration was obtained chiefly 
by painting patterns in vivid colors or carving figures 
of heroic size on the polished stones. 

Ancient Babylonia presents a similar picture, with 
one great difference. No stone quarries were to be 
found along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, so the 
Babylonians had to do their building with baked or 


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CROWNING GLORIES OF ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE 



Here are models of two of the most famous buildings ever constructed—at the top of the Parthenon at Athens, and below a part of the great 
Hall of Columns in the Temple of Karnak, Egypt. They are in ruins today, but these reconstructions show them as they looked when first 
built. The Parthenon or Temple of Athena was planned by the architect Ictinus and completed in 438 B.C. It stood on the height of the 
Acropolis where the exquisite proportion of its lines were the pride of every Athenian. Note that its famous sculptures, by the artist Phidias, 
were painted in life-like colors. The Hall of Columns at Karnak was completed in the 14th century B.C. by the great monarch Rameses II. 
Four more rows of small columns flanked each side of the portion shown here, making 134 columns in all. The size of these may be grasped 
by a comparison with the tiny figure of a man shown standing beneath the great roof. 

































ARCHITECTURE 


J The Logic of Architecture 

gods; Cretan architecture, on the other hand, was 
alive to the needs and comforts of living men. 

Out of this earliest European civilization grew the 
culture of Greece—the greatest of its kind the world 
has ever known. The story of Greek art in its many 
phases is told in other articles in this work. Here 
we shall consider only how the spirit of the Greek 
people is reflected in that architecture, which is so 
clear in its simple beauty that it remains the wonder 
and delight of men to this day. 

The Greeks were above all straight thinkers. When 
they put up a building, they 
wanted it to be reasonable. If 
a pillar had to support a heavy 
weight, that pillar must be 
strong and look strong; if it 
bore only a light weight, it 
must be light and look light. 

They hated tricks of decoration 
and the sham of idle stone¬ 
work. Every portion of the 
building had to do its share 
toward expressing the purpose 
of the whole structure. The 
columns were never mere orna¬ 
ments; they always held some¬ 
thing up. 

The Greeks disliked curved 
lines, for these seemed to lack straightforward 
strength. So they would have nothing to do with 
the arch. Their doors, windows, and roofs were 
constructed entirely on the post and lintel plan— 
two straight piers or columns with a single straight 
stone across the top. 

Working with only columns and straight lines, the 
Greek architects created their beautiful effects by 
the exquisite balance and proportion of their work. 
Look at the picture of the matchless Parthenon, as it 
stood on the Acropolis at Athens in the 5th century 
b.c. Can you take anything away or add anything 
to it, without marring its beauty? Make it taller and 
it becomes top-heavy; make it broader and it is 
squatty. That world-famed temple sums up the free 
genius of a free people, who could not be imposed 
upon by mere size and weight, but who loved true 
and natural beauty for its own sake. 

The graceful language of the Greeks, the flow of 
their poetry, the eloquence of their orators, the just 
discipline of their law, the keen edge of their philos¬ 
ophy, the refinement of their tastes, even the simple 
dignity of their draped costumes, are all reflected in 
the spirit of their unrivaled architecture. 

The three styles of Greek architecture are generally 
distinguished as Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian . These 
can be recognized most readily by the design of the 
capital or top of the column, and by the entablature, 
which is the name given to that part of the building 
directly above the column. The Doric was the sim¬ 
plest of the three and is found in the buildings of the 
most artistic period. The Ionic, with its ram’s horn 


curls, retains much of the Doric simplicity; but the 
elaborate scroll and carving of the Corinthian, with 
its capital modeled on the acanthus plant, marks the 
beginning of the decay of Greek art under the in¬ 
fluence of the Orient. 

Architecture and Engineering among the Romans 

The Romans borrowed the forms of Greek ar¬ 
chitecture without fully grasping the Greek spirit. 
The result was not always beauti/ul. For instance, 
they often put columns on their buildings and monu¬ 
ments without giving them anything to hold up. 

Also, they never learned the 
Greek sense of delicate propor¬ 
tion, and their work at times 
became clumsy and heavy. 

On the other hand the 
Romans were far greater 
engineers than the Greeks. 
They built with a more prac¬ 
tical eye, and as their vast 
empire increased in size their 
architecture developed to meet 
its needs. They took the 
despised arch and made it the 
most useful of all building 
devices. While they were bor¬ 
rowing their ornaments from 
Greece, they were inventing 
many structural forms all their own. 

With the arch the Roman engineers bridged wide 
valleys and built aqueducts to bring water from 
distant hills to Rome. They constructed sewers and 
monuments, tombs and temples, culverts and circuses, 
all on the same principle. They discovered that when 
two arched tunnels cross each other, a square vault 
is formed with ridges running to the four corners. 
Because of these ridges such a vault is called a 
groined vault. By gradually increasing the size of 
this vaulting they were able to roof over large square 
rooms without breaking up the floor space with 
columns or other supports. 

Then, by applying their knowledge of the arch 
principle to the dome, they were able to develop this 
form of roof, which had been used on a small scale in 
eastern countries, into a covering for huge circular 
compartments. 

The Pantheon in Rome is an excellent example of 
the mixture of Greek ornament and Roman engineer¬ 
ing construction. The front or portico is modeled 
after the Greek temples, but behind rises the typical 
Roman dome. While the exterior of this dome is in 
no way beautiful, the interior which it covers is 
impressive in its magnificent size and because of its 
lighting, which is accomplished by a great circular 
opening at the crown. 

The use of the arch and dome prevented the Romans 
from cultivating lightness of style. The structure of 
any arch formation is such that it develops side 
thrusts —that is, it tends to push outward the walls 
or columns supporting it ( see Arch). To overcome 


“During the first six thousand years 
of the world, from the immemorial pagoda 
of Hindustan to the cathedral of Cologne, 
architecture was the great handwriting 
of the human race. Not only every 
religious symbol, but every human 
thought, has its page and its monument 
in that immense book. The human 
race has had no important idea which 
it has not written in stone. Humanity 
has two books, two registers, two testa¬ 
ments: masonry and printing—the Bible 
of Stone and the Bible of Paper.” 

—Victor Hugo. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

177 










ARCHITECTURE 


Rome’s Ostentatious Architecture 




The story of great buildings begins with 
these Egyptian slaves, nearly 5,000 
years ago, pulling and prying along the 
huge blocks of stone out of which the 
pyramid in the background is being 
built. It is brutal work, and we may 
imagine that these men have been toil¬ 
ing in the burning African sun for many years upon this half-finished 
mass of masonry. Next we see the descendants of these same 
slaves working on the great Karnak Temple, 1,500 years later. The 

building art has improved, and 


polit- 

slave 


these thrusts, the Romans 
built their walls thick and 
with few openings. 

But much of this heavi¬ 
ness may be traced to the same cause as the 
heaviness of Egypt. True freedom had ceased 
to exist at the time of Rome’s greatest build¬ 
ing enterprises. The builders were often 
ical leaders seeking personal glory. With 
labor and abundance of materials bought with the 
wealth of conquered peoples, the rulers of Rome could 
give free rein to their extravagance. The ultimate 
result was the massive but rather tasteless splendor 
of triumphal arches, and of such gigantic structures 
as the Colosseum, in which Greek refinement was 
wholly lost. 

Art of the Byzantine Empire 

When the emperor Constantine made Byzantium 
the new capital of the Roman Empire and gave it 
the name Constantinople, the way was prepared for 
a new and vigorous style of architecture. Grecian 
culture and reason, Roman power, and the Oriental 
love of gorgeous decoration joined hands to give the 
world Byzantine art. The Greeks had devoted their 
best efforts to make the exterior of their buildings 
pleasing to the eye. The Byzantine builders, on the 
other hand, turned their attention almost entirely to 
the interior. 

They used the dome as the main element of their 
greatest structures. A glance at the illustration 
showing the interior of the famous church of Santa 
Sophia—the “Holy Wisdom” of God—shows how 


wheeled carts are used to haul 
the stone. But think of carv¬ 
ing out and erecting by hand these immense round pillars! It’s 
still the work of slaves. In the next step all this is changed. We 
cross the Mediterranean from Egypt to Greece and find the free 
Athenian citizens of the 5th century 
B.C. busy on a corner of the famous 
Parthenon. Here civic pride and 


civic 

love of beauty inspire the work. Next we find a 
colonnade going up on the Campus Martius in the 
days of Imperial Rome. These men were great 

engineers, who 

they obtained their SS?tff(SSSs, adding great skin in 
effects of vastness the construction of the arch. When 

d , the Roman court moved to Constanti- 

grandeur. 

The tremendous central dome rests upon half-domes 
at each end, which in turn are supported by still 
smaller half-domes—creating a huge enclosure, with 
an unequaled sweep of open floor-space. 

The Romans had never learned how to construct 
a dome except over a circular compartment. The 
Byzantine architects invented a way of putting a dome 
over a square room. This was done by filling up the 
corners with a mass of masonry, which continued 
the curve of the dome until it tapered off to a point at 
the lower end. This device is called a pendentive. 

The Byzantine dome system shows careful engi¬ 
neering. The successive curves not only hold up the 
immense weight above them, but resist successfully 
the enormous outward thrust, always found, as we have 
seen, wherever the arch principle is used. But in 
spite of this clever planning, the walls had to be made 
very thick. That is why Santa Sophia from the out¬ 
side looks squatty, like a crowded cluster of huge 
mushrooms. 

Byzantine architecture was later copied to some 
extent in Italy, notably in the great domed cathedral 


OF STONE-FROM THE PYRAMIDS 


HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN IN LETTERS 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

178 















Rise of the Romanesque 



ARCHITECTURE 



with graceful domes and needle-like minarets. 

Meanwhile in western Europe architecture was 
struggling against the burdens of poverty and bar¬ 
barism which followed the downfall of the old Roman 
Empire. When the Christians, who had been given 
freedom of worship by Constantine, set to building 
churches, they modeled them after the basilicas or 
public meeting halls of pagan Rome. Lacking both 
the materials and skill to construct domes and vaults 

of stone, they built Wooden 
roofs. With less weight to 
hold up, they used for the 
> first time pillars to wooden 

, arches. But the support 

W/ , 'tk. o roofs were exposed to the 


}KT*TiTW? 


nople, Byzantine architecture developed, mHK' -~ 3P j 

marked by Oriental love of decoration. Wc I mH$ ipT WBKrL -.JEM 

see above two men inlaying the mosaic of an , jli 

angel on the wall of the great church of Santa t . II 

Sophia, completed in 537 A.D. Below, a long- 

robed priest is directing French townsmen in 

the building of a 13th century Gothic cathedral. I f® 

Like the Greeks, * — *?*■* i * iff 

, c, ,, , , • these men are en- T p fill i M 

of St. Mark S in gaged in a labor of _ fM' f\ i 

y„„;.. TJ,,+ ir> love. Religion and pride of craft sr^rMWt _ 1 

\ 6I11C6. L>Ut 111 are their motives. To the right y ■ p ^ ifid 

the main it con- and above is an Elizabethan man- if, f . 

, , * sion, typical of 16th century Eng- 

tinued to be a land. Brick was now used again— % SSilT 
thing Of the East, the tel .<?- 

traveling northward into ” s ''f 0 ““5!” t ' u d rew l", eoab n oftheinlertoof s,.Petet- s 
Russia, and furmshmg the at Rome, showing how the Renaissance architects went 

i ■ e ■ ■ . • r_.tv „ back to the round vaults and arches of Roman times. 

Chief inspiration tor tile Finally we come to the steel-ribbed sky-scrapers of our 

MnVmmmprlnn architecture own time. Here we find embodied usefulness and effi- 

ivionammeaan arcmveciuie, ciencyand man , s complete mastery over his materials. 

which filled the Orient Such a building is mostly made by machinery. 


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ARCHITECTURE 


Revival of Roman Forms 



THE THREE “ORDERS” OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE 



-J 

There’s a legend that the early Greek architects, discovering that the height of the average man is about six times the length of his foot, 
always made their columns (including the capitals) six times as tall as they were broad at the base. This is one of the things which accounts 
for the pleasing proportions of Greek temples. Whether or not this story is true, the Greeks did have many definite rules for building 
beautifully. In this picture we see the several parts of a typical temple gable, including the three types of columns with the entablatures 
above each. It shows how Greek “styles” began with simple Doric dignity, then changed to the “ram’s horn” Ionic style, and finally lost 
their vigor in the acanthus leaf ornaments of the Corinthian. The pediments of the temples were usually filled with sculptured figures, 
and the same was true of the “metopes” between the “triglyphs”—the latter representing in stone the ends of the wooden beams in the 

earlier temples. 


peril of fire. In fact nearly all the buildings of this 
period were destroyed by fire. 

No great improvements were made, however, until 
after Charlemagne had succeeded in reviving in 
western Europe the memories of Rome’s ancient 
greatness, and had kindled the hope that Christen¬ 
dom might be united forever in a Holy Roman 
Empire. This brought a revival of architecture 
based on Roman forms, out of which was born a new 
style called Romanesque. The outstanding feature of 
this style was the development of the old groined 
vault of the Romans. Having no concrete, with which 
the Romans reinforced their work, and being forced 
to economize weight and building materials, architects 
now had to find a simple method for strengthening 
these vaults. They hit upon a great idea. They 
developed the groins or ridges at the four angles into 
independent ribs of stone, which met in the center of 
the vault. Resting upon the corner supports of the 
vault, the ribs simply took the form of two diagonal 
arches, crossing each other in the middle like the ribs 
of an open umbrella. Upon them the roof of the 
vault, made now of light stone, was laid. The four 
side arches leading into the vault also became in¬ 
dependent stone ribs, supporting the sides of the roof. 

Since each of these rib arches was a perfect half¬ 
circle, those spanning the vault diagonally were 
naturally higher than those spanning the sides. When 


the roof was laid, therefore, it had to be domed up 
from the side arches over the taller center arches. 

This invention of a framework or skeleton of stone 
ribs was the great contribution to architecture made 
by the Romanesque builders. Having learned from 
the early Christian basilicas that round columns 
could be trusted to support arches, they used them 
to hold up the new style of vault. In this way they 
could put many equal-sized vaults end to end, roofing 
over a long enclosure. This enclosure would then be 
flanked on each side by a colonnade or row of columns. 

This, indeed, was the way they built their churches. 
The nave or central part of the church between the 
colonnades was a high clear space from the entrance 
at one end to the altar at the other. The altar usu¬ 
ally stood in a semicircular projection, covered with 
a half-dome, which was called the apse and which 
closed that end of the structure, supporting the out¬ 
ward thrust of the last vault. 

To the right and left of the nave were the side 
aisles, covered by a lower roof composed of smaller 
vaults. The outer arches of these smaller vaults were 
filled, forming the exterior walls of the church. Small 
arched windows pierced these walls and lighted the 
aisles. Sometimes the aisle space was divided into 
two stories, each of which looked out upon the nave 
through rows of smaller columns and arches built 
between the big main columns. In front of the altar 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alp habetical 
180 


place 


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| Spread of the Romanesque 




ARCHITECTURE 


THE TEMPLE OF ALL THE GODS AT ROME 



This mode! shows how the famous Pantheon looked in the days of imperial Rome. Erected by Emperor Hadrian in 123 A.D., it remains 
today much as you see it here. The Romans admired Greek architecture, so the portico or entrance was built in Corinthian style. But 
for the main building the architects constructed massive circular walls crowned with a great dome, thus inclosing a round hall 142 feet high 
and 142 feet in diameter, lighted by a ?.7-foot opening pierced in the summit. Such a wide spread of clear floor space would have been 
impossible with the Greek svstem of straight stone beams supported on columns. On the other hand, the builders of the Parthenon at 
Athens would have been horrified at this combination of two utterly different styles of architecture. In the left-hand corner are sketches 

of the arch and dome—the two principal devices introduced by Roman builders. 


and cutting the aisles and nave at right angles there 
was usually a more open space like the arms of a 
cross. This was called the transept. 

Usually the nave rose to a considerable height above 
the roofing of the aisles, leaving a clear wall space 
through which windows were cut, admitting light 
directly into the upper part of the nave itself. This 
device known as the 
clerestory was first used 
by the Egyptians in 
their temples. 

The Romanesque 
movement started in 
Italy and spread rap¬ 
idly. The peoples of 
western Europe were 
awaking from their 
long sleep and were 
shaking off the dead 
weight of barbarism. 

Europe, wrote a monk 
of the 11th century, was 
“adorning itself with a 
white garment of churches.” For the most part 
the monks were the builders, though many a great 
“cathedral,” or bishop’s church, arose at this time. 

Yet the Romanesque, solid and skilful though it 
was, did not satisfy the soaring spirit of the Middle 
Ages. Those churches were heavy and dark, for the 

contained in the Easy Reference 


architects feared the thrusts of the great vaults, 
and they strengthened their thick walls with massive 
buttresses, keeping their window spaces small. It 
was a style well fitted to the castles of warring nobles, 
but unsatisfactory for religious buildings in cold 
climates, where all the sunlight possible was needed. 
Then, suddenly, there was born in northern France 

a new architecture and 
a new art, which 
seemed to grasp its in¬ 
spiration out of the 
very air men were 
breathing. It was the 
style we call “Gothic.” 
To understand this 
architecture, consid¬ 
ered by many the 
greatest of all building 
achievements, we must 
remember the great 
changes that swept 
over Europe and par¬ 
ticularly over France 
during the 12th and 13th centuries. 

The religious fire fanned by the monks had set on 
foot those most romantic of all enterprises—the 
Crusades. While knights and princes were fighting 
for Christianity in the East, a new feeling of inde¬ 
pendence and power was born among the townsmen 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 



Here, in the Colosseum built by Vespasian in the 1st century A.D., we see 
how far the Romans carried the use of the arch. This immense amphitheater, 
616 feet long and 510 feet wide, seated more than 50,000 spectators. In its 
arena the most famous gladiators fought and countless Christian martyrs 
were thrown to wild beasts. 
















ARCHITECTURE 



Cathedrals of the Middle Ages 



The squatty massive exterior of Santa Sophia in Constantinople conceals one of the most gorgeously beautiful interiors in the world. Built 
by the emperor Justinian in the 6th century, this famous church became a Mohammedan mosque, when the Turks captured the city in 
1453. The surrounding towers or “minarets” were erected by the Turks. The drawing in the upper right-hand corner shows part of the 
roof cut away, to let us see how the Byzantine architects supported the great dome upon a descending series of half domes, and so created 

the enormous sweep of clear floor space shown on the opposite page. 


at home. When the crusaders returned, the old 
tyranny of the feudal lords began to crumble and 
the authority of the kings gained strength. In the 
fight against the nobles the kings bargained for the 
support of the towns by granting the citizens new 
liberties and privileges. With the new freedom came 
intense city pride, fostered by the gilds of skilled 
workmen, who were the leaders of the townsmen. 

In a later day men burning with such political and 
religious zeal might have written great poems or 
painted great pictures. But now they turned their 
energies to building cathedrals, as the churches of 
bishops were called, and each city sought to outdo 
its neighbors. 

Rich and poor, old and young, delighted to take 
part in the pious work of helping to build a great 
church which should be worthy of their beloved 
town. For miles the roads would be thronged with 
processions of men and women—some of them even 
princes and great nobles—tugging at long ropes which 
dragged slow-moving carts loaded with building ma¬ 
terials and food and drink for the workmen. Black- 
robed priests might be seen here and there exhorting 
them to greater zeal, for the building of a cathedral 
was the work which taxed the piety and resources 
of several generations. 

Even more animated was the scene at the chosen 
spot where the soaring arches of the cathedral slowly 


rose from their cradle of scaffolding. Under the keen 
eyes of the bishop and the master architect, a host of 
workmen, proud to have a part in so glorious a work, 
plied chisel and mallet, lever and 
trowel, in the shaping, erecting, | 
and beautifying of these giant 


structures. 

Every person in the town had 
some share in the undertaking. 
If he did not take part in the 
actual work, his money went to 

The Cathedral of St. Mark’s in 
Venice is another fine example of 
Byzantine architecture. With a 
more beautiful exterior than Santa 
Sophia, it is equally rich in mosaic 
decorations within. The great cam¬ 
panile or bell-tower in front of it 
fell down in 1902, through settling 
of the soil, but has since been 
rebuilt. 




For any subject not found 


its alphabetical place see information 
182 
















THE INTERIOR OF SANTA SOPHIA 



Columns of green and red marble the glistening splendor of gold and mosaic decorations, and the play of lights and shadows on the walls 
makethe inferior ofSanta Soohil’a sight never to be forgotten. Above all is the impressive sweep of curve upon curve, rising upward 175 
f”e^ to the apex of the g"ant dome The mosaics which represented human figures have been covered over with stucco by the Mohammedans, 
fortheix re^Fgionforbids^magesof living creatures; the walls have also been hung with great round shields bearing quotations from the 
Koran in Turkish script. The floors are covered with prayer mats, on which the worshipers kneel facing toward Mecca. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


183 
























ARCHITECTURE 


What the Flying Buttress Did 


SPLENDID INTERIOR OF PISA CATHEDRAL 


This view of the interior of the cathedral at Pisa, Italy, begun in 1063, shows a high development of the Romanesque style. This form of 
architecture began with an imitation of the old Roman basilicas, and was at first exceedingly bare and somber. By the 11th century, how¬ 
ever, the Romanesque architects of Italy had felt strongly the influence of the Byzantine love of decoration. Among the characteristics of 
this style of building was the increased use of long rows of pillars to support heavy arches. The walls were thick with small window and 
door openings, and the roofs were comparatively low, for the builders had not learned to trust their buttresses, nor had they developed the 
wonderful system of ribbed vaulting which made possible such great Gothic structures as that shown on the next page. 


swell the building fund, in the form of regular 
offerings or special contributions. The rest of the 
expense was met from the revenues of the bishop and 
the cathedral clergy. 

In scores of towns of France and Germany such 
scenes were enacted, as one glorious Gothic cathedral 
after another sprang into being. In these structures 
we see enshrined the very soul of the Middle Ages, 
“a prayer materialized and apparently imperishable.” 
No better parallel for this joyous spirit of creation can 
be found than by comparing it to the spirit of national 
joy and civic pride that gave birth to the noble 
buildings of Athens under Pericles. The Scottish 
essayist Carlyle once asked for “men who sing at their 
work.” If we bear in mind that the workmen of the 
Gothic churches sang and worked with an intense 
spiritual fervor, we shall understand the blithe reli¬ 
gious spirit in which these beautiful fabrics were raised. 

By looking at such superb achievements of the new 
art as the cathedrals of Amiens and Notre Dame of 


Paris you can pick out the most important points in 
which they differ from the Romanesque structures. 
You notice the increased height of the interior, the 
lightness and delicacy of the clustered pillars, and you 
observe that the pointed arch has taken the place of 
the round arch and become the motif carried through¬ 
out the amazingly elaborate scheme of decoration. 
And you notice too—for this is a key to the whole 
new style—the great lofty window spaces filled with 
glowing colored glass. Finally you gaze at the be¬ 
wildering exterior, with its system of slender arched 
props springing from the tops of the solid buttresses, 
and curving like long thin fingers to the clerestory 
walls, where they resist the enormous outward pres¬ 
sure of the vaulted stone roof. These are the famous 
filling buttresses , without which the structural miracle 
of the Gothic cathedral would be impossible. 

The new builders had, above all,two objects. First, 
they were trying to increase the size, majesty, lofti¬ 
ness, and dignity of their sacred buildings that they 


For any subject 


not found in 


its 


alphabetical 

184 


pi ace 


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NOTRE DAME, THE QUEEN OF FRENCH CATHEDRALS 


For eight centuries this great church has stood on the narrow islet in the Seine River which forms the center of Paris, and has seen the tides 
of history sweep by. The good king. Saint Louis IX, passed through those massive doors to pray before he started away on his ill-fated 
crusades. The Paris mob during the French Revolution stormed these portals, tearing down the statues of saints and kings and setting 
their “Goddess of Reason” upon the altar within. Victor Hugo wove about these walls, stained with age, his most famous romance, ‘Notre 
Dame de Paris’. The foundation stone of the cathedral was laid in 1163 by Pope Alexander III, at that time a fugitive from Rome, and 
the main edifice was completed about 1240. It was one of the earliest of Gothic churches, retaining some of the massive qualities of 
Romanesque architecture. It is 430 feet long and 170 feet wide. Its towers, which rise 223 feet above the street, are adorned with numerous 

“gargoyles” or grotesque figures of animals and demons. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

185 





























































This rear view of the Cathedral of Notre Dame shows us how those long slender “fingers of stone”—the flying buttresses—proiect over 
the low-roofed aisles to brace the soaring walls against the outward thrust of the arched vaulting. Delicate as they look thev have stood 
firm for 800 years—a proof of the wonderful engineering skill of these old French builders. The sketch at the right shows the system of 
double flying buttresses thrust out from piers of solid masonry in the famous Amiens cathedral. 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

186 


ARCHITECTURE 


Purpose of the Pointed Arch [ 


might more fittingly express the riches, the power, and 
the glory of the medieval church, then at the height 
of its greatness. Second, they wanted to increase the 
size of the window openings, to admit warmth and 
sunlight to the unlighted and unheated interiors 
during the chill of northern winters. 

These results were obtained by tremendous feats 
of bold engineering. The architects gathered the 
entire weight of the great vaulted roof on a network 
of ribs springing from piers of clustered columns. 
Thus the burden of the roof was entirely removed 
from the walls, and the builders were free to fill in 
the spaces between the columns with enormous 
window openings. The side thrusts are carried by 
deep but narrow buttresses braced against the 
exterior walls, and by that wonder of engineering, the 
flying buttresses. Thus the principle of the skeleton 
framework has been extended to the whole building, 
just as in the steel skeletons of the sky-scrapers of 
today. The whole great structure of ribs and but¬ 
tresses, supporting the vaulted roof, is strong enough 


of the great cathedral of Reims, though they 
destroyed much of the exquisite decoration that 
had made it one of the glories of France. 


to stand alone with- 
walls, and can thus be ’ 
heights than before, 
dieval builders solved 
how substantially 
is proved by the scores 
in the 12th and 13th 
to this day as firm 
they were built. Even 
German guns during 
1914-18failedto shat- 


out any supporting 
raised to far greater 
How well the me- 
their problems and 
they did their work 
of great edifices built 
centuries which stand 
and solid as the year 
the battering of 
the World War of 
ter the framework 


This is the plan of a typical medieval church—a cross-shaped 
design which is still followed in many churches of our own 
day. The black portions show the position of the piers and 
buttresses which support the weight and bear the stresses of 
the whole structure. The dotted lines indirate the framework 
of arched stone vaulting, connecting buttresses and piers and 
holding up the roof. 


The impression of lightness and delicacy is accen¬ 
tuated by the use of the pointed arch instead of the 
circular arch. With the pointed arch the side arches 
of the groined vaulting can be raised to the same 
height as the diagonal spans, giving greater strength 
to the whole roof and exerting less side thrust. 
Although the pointed arch was thus a mere detail 







































\ Story-Books in Stone 

J'SlJ 






A K (j li l l ECTURE 


ST. PETER’S AT ROME — THE CHURCH OF CHURCHES 



The great Michelangelo built a portion of this church of the popes, partly on his own design and partly following the plans of his trrpat 
predecessor Bramante Both were under the influence of that enthusiastic revival of classical learning and irt called the ReMissScf 
Rnmp f fnl e Pit te Th' m0re or i glI l al and imposmg beauty achieved by the Gothic builders, and went back to Greece and ancient 
Rome for their models. This accounts for Michelangelo s dome, and for the tasteless Greek portico, the latter the work of a later and 
lesser artist. This dome is the highest dome in the world, measuring 437 feet to the top of the cross on the ball, and is a triumph of archi¬ 
tectural beauty. The ball, which looks like a tiny circle from below, is large enough inside to accommodate a dozen people. It is reached 
after a steep climb between the inner and outer skins” of the dome. From a glance at St. Peter’s, you realize where the architects of 
the oapitol at Washington and of many other great public buildings in America obtained their inspiration. The long severe building* at 
the right form a wing of the Vatican—the Pope s residence—and illustrate the style of architecture much used in Renaissance residences 


growing out of the new structural 
genius of the medieval builders 
decorative possibilities and made it 
a keynote repeated and emphasized 
everywhere—in the window open¬ 
ings, in the niches, and in the slender 
pinnacles that capped the buttresses 
and towers. 

To provide suitable decoration for 
such marvels of Gothic architecture, 
the builders developed ornamenta¬ 
tion to a wonderful pitch of richness 
and ingenuity. The great wall spaces 
which the Italians had filled with 
paintings gave way to exquisite crea¬ 
tions in the new art of stained glass, 
bathing the interior in a sea of living 
colors and telling biblical stories 
and Christian legends. The art of 
the sculptor was brought in to adorn 
the whole fairy-like fabric with a 
myriad of images of men, animals, 
and plants, often carved with rare 
delicacy and fidelity. Here the joy- 


principles, the ous fresh-eyed 
azed upon its for expression, 



This drawing illustrates the principle of 
the Gothic vault and the “reason” behind 
the pointed arch. You can see at once 
that the curve of the diagonal rib, passing 
through the center of the vault between 
the pillars at the extreme left and right, is 
a half circle. The span of the side arches 
is, of course, narrower than the diagonal 
span, and half-circle arches in these posi¬ 
tions would not reach as high as the mid¬ 
dle arches. To bring them up to the 
latter level they had to be made pointed. 


genius of the times found full scope 
brimming over into an exuberance of 
fancy that put hideous grotesques 
and grinning demons side by side 
with reverent conceptions of the 
saints and apostles. 

Gothic Architecture in Different 
Lands 

From France the Gothic style 
spread to Germany, Spain, and Eng¬ 
land, taking on subtle differences 
that mirror national character. In 
England there arose a tendency to 
emphasize straight lines, especially 
in the mullions and bars of the- 
enormous windows. This tendency 
asserted itself in other decorative 
features, finally resulting in the for¬ 
mation of a definite style known 
as the Perpendicular. At the same 
time the ribs holding up the vaulting 
were multiplied and cross ribs were 
added, dividing the surface into elab¬ 
orate patterns of exquisite delicacy 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 

187 


a t 


the 


end of this 


work 








































ARCHITECTURE 


Revival of Classic Art 



and complexity. Instead of this fan vaulting, mag¬ 
nificent open timber work, such as that which forms 
the most striking feature of many of the Oxford and 
Cambridge colleges, was often used to support the 
roof. 

Church towers and spires, which reached such a 
high development in Gothic times, date back to a 
much earlier period. Perhaps the old Babylonian 
tower temple was the ancestor of the steeple. In 
Christian countries they were first built separate from 
the churches, like the campaniles or bell towers of 
Italy. In Romanesque times they had become 
important parts of the church itself. The skill and 
artistry required to create towers 
worthy of the great Gothic cathe¬ 
drals can be appreciated by a 
glance at the famous twin spires of 
Cologne. 

The knowledge of engineering 
acquired in building Romanesque 
and Gothic churches made possible 
also those great castles of the 
Middle Ages, erected by kings and 
nobles for military purposes. In¬ 
deed, the whole story of those 
stirring days is summed up in a 
way by those two types of build¬ 
ing—the castles of the noble lords 
and the cathedrals and town- and 
gild-halls of the townsmen. 

But the reign of Gothic art was 
short. With the Renaissance came 
a revival of the old Greek and 
Roman styles. Men became en¬ 
slaved for a time in the worship of 
antiquity, declaring that there was 
no art except the art of Rome and 
Athens. They even came to look 
upon these cathedrals as the hid¬ 
eous work of barbarians, and so 
gave to this art the misleading 
name—“Gothic”—which it still 
bears (see Renaissance). 

In the 15th cen¬ 
tury under the 
influence of the 
revival of classical 
learning and art, 
the pointed arch 
again yielded to the 
round arch of the 
Romans. The old 
classic columns, 
capitals, and other 
details were again 
employed, together 
with the man y f orms 
of ornament of the 
Graeco - Roman 
patterns. How 


complete was this reversion to classical styles may be 
seen by the extent to which it survives today in our 
most familiar examples of architecture and ornament. 
Renaissance pediments—curved or gable-shaped— 
like many other Renaissance details are everywhere 
to be seen, in public buildings and houses, in railway 
cars, and even in furniture. 

Architecture and the Home 
At the same time there came a vast improvement 
in the comfort of domestic arrangements. With the 
introduction of window-glass, chimneys, carpets, and 
comfortable furniture, builders began to construct 
houses which should no longer be hovels or castles 
but elaborately decorated and 
luxurious residences. This taste 
for domestic comfort gradually 
found expression in such palatial 
mansions as the Pitti Palace in 
Florence, and Hampton Court 
in England. In the latter coun¬ 
try the reign of Queen Elizabeth 
was marked by the building of 
scores of noble residences—the 
Elizabethan manor houses, 
many of which still stand as 
among the greatest achieve¬ 
ments of English architects. 
The rediscovery of the art of 
making bricks, forgotten since 
the time of the Roman Empire, 
provided the architects of this 
period with a convenient and 
adaptable material. 

But it was not long before 
men’s tastes ran to elaborate 
decorations and florid styles, 
called Baroque and Rococo. No 
great new principles of building 
were invented, and in many 
large public buildings the great¬ 
est confusion of styles pre¬ 
vailed, with a bewildering and 
often tasteless intermingling of 
straight lines and curves, arches 
and pillars, scroll work and 
sculpture. 

In this confusion architecture 
as the expression of a 
national spirit died. In¬ 
stead grew up scores of 
schools founded by suc- 
cessful architects, each 
following its own tastes. 
While the results were not 
always happy in the larger 
public enterprises, there 
was steady progress in 
giving to private homes 
more beauty and comfort. 
Leaving Europe, we find 


REACHING UP FOR ROOM 


A fine example of “sky-scraper” architecture, one of many in the crowded 
“Loop” district of Chicago. It shows how the tallness of such buildings, 
which tends to throw them out of proportion, can actually be made im¬ 
pressive and beautiful by the use of long straight piers which give unity 
to the design and emphasize the simple usefulness of the whole structure. 

subject not found in its alphabetical place see 

188 


For any 


inf or motion 












































ARCTIC REGIONS 


j Beauty of the Sky-Scraper 


vigorous styles developing in the New World. 
Spanish monks in Mexico and California produced 
buildings well suited to the climate and with the 
distinctive lines we recognize today under the name 
of Mission architecture. In some instances they 
imitated successful¬ 
ly the building 
methods of the 
ancient Aztec 
Indians. 

In the English col¬ 
onies in America a 
type called Colonial 
grew up, marked 
by the dignified use 
of pillars and por¬ 
tico, and by a return 
to classical princi¬ 
ples of line and 
proportion. 

But it was not 
until steel construc¬ 
tion began that any 
vitally new architec¬ 
ture arose. This 
style, which is 
typically American, 
finds its highest 
expression in the 
modern sky-scraper. 

Crowded together 
as these immense 
buildings are in our 
cities, it is difficult 
to appreciate their 
full and vigorous 
beauty, especially 
when the simple 
lines are handled by 
a master architect. 

The straight sweep 
of stone piers, rising 
aloft between the rows of windows, carries with it an 
inspiration which surely would have delighted the 
imagination of those Gothic masters, who believed 
above all in the fitness of the means to the end. 
(See Building Construction.) 

ARCTIC REGIONS. Imagine a gigantic pair of 
compasses with one leg set at the North Pole and the 
other about 1,750 miles to the south at latitude 66° 32' 
N. The circle of more than 10,000 miles which the 
lower leg would mark on the earth is the Arctic Circle, 
and the area included in its sweep is known as the 
Arctic regions. 

For about four-fifths of its circuit the Arctic Circle 
passes over land, cutting off from Europe, Asia, and 
America fringes averaging about 300 miles wide in 
North America, and reaching a width of nearly 600 
miles in parts of Siberia. The remainder of the 
Arctic regions—a vast tract of more than 8,000,000 


square miles, half as large as all of North and South 
America—consists of the Arctic Ocean and the many 
islands and archipelagoes which it contains. 

Aside from these continental fringes, the greatest 
land mass of this region is Greenland, which lies 


almost wholly within the Arctic Circle. It is a vast 
island belonging to Denmark, about seven-eighths 
as large as the original 13 states of the American 
Union. Here too is the great Arctic archipelago of 
America—Baffin Land, Banks Land, Victoria Land, 
Grant Land, and the many other frozen wastes that 
have lured so many brave men to their doom. Among 
other islands and archipelagoes are Spitzbergen, 
Nova Zembla, and Franz Josef Land, lying north of 
Europe, and Nicholas II Land and New Siberia, 
lying north of Asia. These desolate regions are for the 
most part uninhabited, and visited only in the summer 
time by hunters, fishermen, and ivory-miners. In 
many places there are enormous deposits of fossil ivory 
—the tusks of the mammoths that used to roam this 
region in the long ago, when it had a milder climate. 

Not until recently has there been a systematic 
attempt to develop the mineral wealth whieh is 


STORY OF THE SEARCH FOR THE NORTH POLE 



Here is a map-story of the Pole that Peary found, and also of the various attempts of other bold explorers to 
attain this icy prize. Do you notice that the Magnetic Pole and the North Pole are two entirely different things 
and situated a long distance apart? If you long to be an explorer, notice also that there is still a vast region 
north of Canada that man has not yet traversed. 


contained in the Ea*y 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of thix 

189 


work 














ARCTIC REGIONS 



ARGENTINA 


] 


known to exist in Nova Zembla, in Spitzbergen, in 
Northern Alaska, and elsewhere. Now rich de¬ 
posits of coal have been found and mining has 
begun in Arctic Alaska, and American, British, and 
Swedish companies are shipping coal in consider¬ 
able quantities from Spitzbergen. But attempts to 
develop the industrial resources of. the Arctic lands 
are made under enormous difficulties. Throughout 
the whole of the Arctic regions the average tempera¬ 
ture is below freezing, and the winter temperatures 
in certain parts average 35 degrees below zero. 

Man has a hard struggle to support himself in this 
inhospitable clime. The Eskimos of America and 
Greenland, the Indians of Alaska, the Laplanders, 
and the natives of northern Siberia battle contin¬ 
uously against famine and death. Only about 2,000 
species of plant life have been discovered in the Arctic 


zone, very few of them trees. Willows, junipers, and 
birches, stunted more by the dry winter winds than by 
the cold, are found on the fringes of the region. 
Flowering plants, ferns, mosses, and lichens have 
been seen in the northernmost lands visited by man. 

Fur-bearing animals are numerous, such as the 
hare, fox, wolf, polar bear, and musk-ox. They are 
either permanently white, like the polar bear, or 
grow white coats in winter, and so their furs are 
highly prized. The birds are largely sea-birds— 
gulls, ducks, and geese, together with ptarmigans and 
snow-birds—and migrate south for the winter. 

The sea life is abundant. Whales, seals, and wal¬ 
ruses are still found in large numbers, though sadly 
diminished by ruthless hunting. Valuable fisheries 
are found on the northern coasts of Russia and other 
Arctic lands. (See Polar Exploration.) 


The AMAZING GROWTH of ARGENTINA 

A RGENTINA (ar-gln-te'- Extent. —North and south, about 2,300 miles; east and west, about largely Unexplored, of 
na). For nearly three S.oS 63 ’ Area ’ 1,153,119 square miles - Population * about desert, forest, lakes, and 
centuries the Spanish ad- Chief Rivers. —Rio de la Plata and its tributaries, the Parana and swamps, inhabited Only 

venturers and settlers held Largest cities. —Buenos Aires (capital, 1,640,000 population); Rosario by fierce native tribes. As 
the flat monotonous plains ( 22 s,ooo); Cordoba (i56,ooo); La Plata, Tucuman, Santa Fe, the continent narrows to 

of Argentina in little es- Chief Products. —Meats, wool, hides, and other live-stock products; fbe SOUth the pampas pass 
teem. This southeastern wheat, flour, corn, oats, flaxseed, alfalfa; butter and cheese; into the Cold desolate Step- 

part of the South Amer- “ d ° ,h “ pr ” ducB ' pesofPatagonia,separated 

ican continent lacked the rugged picturesque scenery from the more northerly regions by the Rio Negro, 
of the Andes regions with their stores of precious This little-known and undeveloped territory, the 
metals, as well as the vast and mysterious forests of the “Scotland of South America,” covers nearly one-third 

of Argentina’s area. 
Grasslands are 
found near the 
coast, and cattle 
ranchers are there 
beginning to super¬ 
sede the wandering 
bands of Patagonian 
Indians ( see Pat¬ 
agonia). 

The crest of the 
Andes forms the 
boundary line 
between Argentina 
and Chile. High 
table-lands and 
precipitous valleys, 
most of them too 
cold and arid for 
cultivation, but con¬ 
taining mineral de¬ 
posits which have 
been little develop¬ 
ed, here descend 

of these immensely fertile prairies or pampas which into foothills which gradually merge into the plains, 

occupy the center of the country, stretching from the Variations of climate are striking, both from north 

Atlantic seaboard to the foothills of the Andes. To to south and from east to west. In the torrid north, 

the north lies the Gran Chaco, a great low plain, the climate is typically tropical, with abundant 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

190 


Amazon. Yet here, 
if the Spaniards had 
only known it, was 
the true El Dorado 
—not an El Dorado 
of gold, but of rich 
pastures and fields 
which hold the 
promise of more 
wealth than all the 
gold mines of the 
earth. In the last 
half century enor¬ 
mous fortunes have 
been made on these 
dusty uninviting 
prairies, and the 
Argentine Republic 
today is the leading 
country of South 
America. 

One-sixth of the 
whole extent of 
Argentina consists 


A SCHOOLROOM IN A RGENTINA 

a m ir 



Some of the new schoolrooms of Argentina are very attractive. Here is a schoolroom 
in what was originally a public building for the offices of the government. In the 
schools of Argentina light and air are given first consideration. The room shown in 
the picture illustrates this fact. Doesn’t it look spacious and attractive? The floors 

are tiled. 

























| Vast Lands, Few Owners 

rainfall. In the extreme south snow falls every 
month, but the warm equatorial current sufficiently 


ARGENTINA 


counteracts the influence of the Antarctic waters and 
the cold winds of the Andes to make the region hab- 


ARGENTINA AND HER TREASURES 


itable. Much of western Argentina 
is arid because the winds from the 
Andes lose their moisture before 
reaching the plains. In some regions 
days of scorching heat under cloud¬ 
less skies are followed by nights of 
bitter cold. Most of the country, 
however, enjoys a temperate clim¬ 
ate much like that of the United 
States and Canada, except that the 
seasons are reversed. 

A Boundless Sea of Waving Grass 
Life on the great pampas, whence 
Argentina draws her wealth, some¬ 
what resembles the life of the west¬ 
ern plains of the United States half 
a century ago. Once a vast inland 
sea, with only a few of the highest 
points here and there emerging as 
islands, the pampas today still re¬ 
semble a sea—but a boundless sea 
of waving grass at times so high as 
to hide a man on horseback. The 
soil is almost invariably fertile 
where nature or irrigation pro¬ 
vides sufficient moisture. Only 
along the banks of the few feeble 
streams are there native trees, 
but settlers have begun to plant 
the eucalyptus and fruit orchards. 
Roads are mere tracks of dust or 
mud according to the season, for 
there is little stone or gravel for 
road-making. 

This great prairie is divided into 
enormous cattle and grain ranches, 
some containing a hundred square 
miles of land, and the average 
being about six square miles. A 
comparatively few wealthy owners 
were allowed by the government 
to take up those great tracts, thus 
bringing about conditions the re¬ 
verse of those in North America, 
where the land is in the hands of 
many settlers. Argentina may be 
said to be still in a state of agri¬ 
cultural feudalism, which has been 
one of the chief retarding features 
in its development. The rural pop¬ 
ulation is divided into two sharply 
contrasted classes, the wealthy 
landowners and their impoverished 
and ignorant laborers and tenants. 
Because of the vast distances, and 

Traveling over Argentina with the eye, we can learn as much as we could do in months of because of the gulf fixed between 
tramping and riding over the land itseJf. What a variety of climate and products this rich the rich and the DOOr Argentina 
land presents, stretching as it does from the Tropic of Capricorn almost down to the northern , , 6 ,, 

limit of the ice-drift. has no such rural life to oner as the 




TROPIC OF 
1AFR1CORX 


30 ! 


■Blanc 


40 


ivay 


ovU 


mat* 




Deseado _ 

/ L \ 


OVUf 




alkland Is 

(BritttfW) 


Annual 
Rainfall 
in Inches 


FVEGO 


^CAhE 


L<oO° 














ARGENTINA 


Land Monopoly Causes Trouble 


United States, with its many schools and churches 
and social advantages. Of recent years the draw¬ 
backs of the old system have been recognized, and laws 
have been passed looking to the breaking up of the 
great estates and the creation of smaller holdings. 

The Development of Argentina 

Argentina’s prosperity dates only from 1880. 
Before that time it did not produce cereals enough 
for its own use, and its meat exports were confined 
to Brazil and Cuba. Today the long-horned cattle 
of the early days have given place to white-faced 
Herefords and other pedigreed stock, just as the 
native gauchos, like the cowboys of the United States, 
are disappearing with the advent of more scientific 
farming. Argentina ranks third in the list of wheat- 
exporting countries, being exceeded only by Canada 
and the United States. In addition enormous quan¬ 
tities of frozen meats, hides, and wool are sent every 
year to Great Britain, the United States, and other 
countries, and nearly one-half of the world’s flaxseed 
comes from this land. 

In railway development the Argentine Republic 
leads all South American states with more than 
23,000 miles. Lines radiate inland in all directions 
from Buenos Aires to the great wheat and cattle 
sections. River transportation is also available for 
many parts of the country, chiefly on the three great 
rivers, the Uruguay, the Parana, and the Paraguay, 
which unite to form the estuary of La Plata—one 
of the greatest among the river systems of the world 
(see Plata River). 

Nearly one-fifth of the population is concentrated 
in the magnificent capital Buenos Aires, the foremost 
city of Latin America, exceeded in the western con¬ 
tinent only by New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. 
Through the great estuary of La Plata at its door 
plows a steady stream of liners from every quarter 
of the world, bringing swarms of immigrants and 
imports and taking away vast stores of meat and 
wheat. The rest of the country is sparsely popu¬ 
lated, with only about six inhabitants to the square 
mile as compared with 30 to the square mile in the 
United States. Labor unrest, frequent strikes, and 
radical propaganda in recent years have awakened 
the statesmen of the nation to the perils of an over¬ 
grown city population and a sparse country popula¬ 
tion; and serious attempts are being made to break 
up the system of land monopoly and thus 
get more of the population into the country. 

It is not likely that Argentina will ever 
become a great manufacturing center. So 
far as is known it contains little coal and 
iron, though it is believed that there are 
abundant supplies of petroleum still unde¬ 
veloped. On account of the difficulties of 
mining operations and transportation in 
the Andes, the mining industry has been 
neglected, though there are a few rich de¬ 
posits of silver, gold, copper, and a few 
other minerals. 


Argentina more than any other Latin-American 
country is a white man’s land, for the Indian popu¬ 
lation numbers only about 10,000 and the half-breed 
element only about 100,000. The white population 
is chiefly from Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, 
etc. The language and customs are almost entirely 
Spanish. 

Argentina in History 

Captain Juan de Solis (1515) and Sebastian Cabot 
(1527) were among the first Europeans to visit the 
region of the Plata River. In 1535 Don Pedro de 
Mendoza founded a settlement where the Argentine 
capital now stands, but it was soon destroyed by In¬ 
dians. Seven horses and five mares escaped to the 
plains at that time and became the ancestors of 
the immense herds of wild horses that once roamed 
the pampas. In 1580 Buenos Aires was refounded 
and Spanish settlers began spreading over the 
country. 

Argentina became the seat of a vigorous revolu¬ 
tionary movement against Spanish rule in South 
America as early as 1810. Desultory fighting went 
on for six years, until (in 1816) a revolutionary con¬ 
gress assembled and declared Argentina’s indepen¬ 
dence. England and the United States were the 
first to recognize the new republic. Soon after, a 
patriotic army under General San Martin crossed 
the Andes—one of the greatest feats in military 
history and helped Chile and Peru to shake off the 
Spanish yoke. Despite his military success, San 
Martin refused to accept civil office and withdrew 
to Europe. 

A period of civil wars followed in Argentina which 
ended only in 1852 with the fall of General Rosas. 
Tn 1853 the republic adopted a constitution closely 
modeled on that of the United States. For a time 
there was a fierce war against Paraguay, in which 
Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil were allied. 

To commemorate the arbitration which ended 
troublesome boundary disputes with Chile, the two 
nations united in setting up the famous peace statue 
“The Christ of the Andes”—a colossal bronze figure 
which stands above 
the principal moun¬ 
tain pass leading 
from the one country 
to the other. 





This is one of the gauchos, or Argentine cowboys, throwing the lasso. Darwin, 
the great scientist, tells in the story of his world voyage in the “Beagle” how 
he admired the skill of the gauchos and how, in trying to imitate them, he 
lassoed himself. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

192 






Targonauts 

The Argentine Republic remained neutral through¬ 
out the World War of 1914-18. The Argentine 
congress, incensed by Germany’s illegal sinking of 
Argentine vessels, voted by a large majority to break 
off diplomatic relations, but the president refused to 
take this step. 

The government of Argentina is a federal republic. 
The provinces have their own legislatures and retain 
full authority in local matters, even levying taxes on 
interstate commerce. The president is elected for 
six years by electors chosen in much the same manner 
as in the United States. The national legislature 
consists of a senate whose members hold office for 
nine years, and a house of deputies elected for four 
years. The Roman Catholic faith is the state reli¬ 
gion, but other worships are tolerated. There is a 
well-advanced system of primary, secondary, normal, 
and higher education, with a smaller percentage of 
illiteracy about 50 per cent—than in any other 
South American country. 

Argonauts ( dr'go-nats ). In Colchis on the dis¬ 
tant shores of the Black Sea—so the old Greeks 
believed—there was once the fleece or skin of a 
wondrous sheep, all of pure gold, which was nailed to 
a tree in a sacred grove. By day and by night it was 
guarded by a sleepless dragon and by fire-breathing 
bulls, and in spite of its priceless value no mortal 
had ever braved these dangers to win it. 

At last an adventurous youth named Jason, heir 
to the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly, made a vow to 
perform this dangerous task. With the aid of the 
gods he built an enchanted ship called the Argo, and 
accompanied by the noblest heroes of Greece—Castor 
and Pollux, Heracles (Hercules), Orpheus, and others 

he set sail for Colchis. The journey was long and 
perilous, but the dauntless Argonauts (so called from 
the name of the ship and the Greek word meaning 
“to sail”) overcame all obstacles and at last reached 
their destination. 

The king of Colchis promised Jason the Golden 
Fleece if he would yoke to a brazen ploughshare the 
fire-breathing bulls, plow a field sacred to the god 
Ares (Mars), and sow it with dragons’ teeth. From 
these, armed warriors would spring and seek to slay 
him. When these warriors were disposed of he 
must still fight with and slay the terrible dragon. 

With the aid of the king’s daughter Medea, a 
powerful sorceress who had fallen in love with 
Jason, the latter successfully performed these 
dangerous labors. A magic ointment protected him 
from the fiery breath of the bulls. The warriors 
were made to attack and slay one another. The 
dragon was put into a profound sleep by a magic 
potion, and Jason was enabled to draw near and cut 
off his frightful head. 

Seizing the hard-won Golden Fleece, Jason fled 
with Medea to the good ship Argo and sailed back 
to Iolcus. The Argo was dedicated to Poseidon, the 
god of the sea, and was long preserved. 

Jason, alas, proved untrue to Medea, and with 


ARGONNE FOREST! 

her magic she made for her rival a garment of won¬ 
drous beauty, but of such deadly poison that it 
burned like fire and proved a robe of death. When 
the frantic Jason rushed in search of the sorceress, 
she disappeared from view in a golden chariot drawn 
by dragons through the air. 

ARGONNE (< ar-gdnn ') FOREST. During the night 
of Sept. 25, 1918, the 20 miles of war-worn trenches 
between the Meuse and the Aisne rivers, north of 
Verdun in eastern France, seemed to fill up myste¬ 
riously with gliding shadows. Whispered passwords 
and softly muttered orders told the French veterans 
who had been holding the line that the American First 
Army, fresh from its victory at St. Mihiel, was 
moving into position for battle. 

A few yards to the north lay the formidable German 
defense trehches, which for four years had resisted all 
attacks. A cautious glance through a periscope 
from the French side might have shown beyond the 
barbed wire of No Man’s Land the rounded sil¬ 
houettes of concrete machine-gun emplacements, 
strung like beads along the Hindenburg Line. But 
the most menacing prospect of all confronted the 
Americans in the western part of the sector, between 
the Aire River and the Aisne. There the trenches 
wound through the double darkness of the rocky 
hills and ravines of the great Argonne Forest, and 
the soldiers knew that this was considered the 
strongest position of the enemy between the North 
Sea and Switzerland. Composed of tangled patches 
of trees and thicket, separated by clearings and pierced 
by a few straggling roads, it was a wonderful place 
to defend and a fearful place to attack. On the 
farther side of every clearing, at every turn in the 
roads, in every ruined farmhouse, the thick skull¬ 
shaped roofs of the German machine-gun nests were 
concealed—low concrete towers, half in and half out 
of the ground, presenting toward the American side 
only a narrow slit, several feet long but barely three 
inches wide, through which the guns were fired. 
Such “pill boxes” were impervious to rifle bullets, 
to shrapnel, to everything but a direct hit from a 
heavy gun, a thing almost impossible to achieve, 
as they were invisible a few yards away. 

The Great Attack at Dawn 

Suddenly from behind the 20-mile line, an earth¬ 
rocking roar shattered the night. Great whips of 
fire lashed the darkness as the American artillery 
in the rear laid down the barrage that was to break 
the way for the infantry’s advance. For four hours 
the curtain of shells, screaming overhead, crashed 
down on the German defenses, while the German 
guns replied. 

In the trenches, beneath this roof of flying metal, 
the Americans hitched up their belts and waited 
with bayonets fixed. Young lieutenants paced the 
“duck-walks” with their eyes on their wrist watches. 
The “zero hour,” which was to mark the beginning 
of the attack and from which all the battle operations 
were timed, had been fixed at a few minutes before 


contained in the Eaey Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

193 







Iargonne forest 

dawn. As the great moment approached, a drizzling 
rain set in. 

Just as the black of the east turned to the morning 
gray of September 26, the waiting troops saw the 
shadows of the pacing officers stop. A last glance at 
the glowing radio dials of their watches, then from 
one end of the line to the other the lieutenants 
sprang to the trench ladders, and their shouted com¬ 
mands could be dimly heard: “All right, let’s go!” 

Out of the trenches poured the waves of olive-drab 
soldiers, and forward through the uprooted barbed 
wire and the sea of shell craters, sweeping over the 
first line defenses of the enemy in the first bold rush. 
All that day they fought and the next and the next, 
capturing the “impregnable” machine-gun nests by 
the simple method of bayonet charges in the face of 
a hail of bullets. As one noted war critie wrote, the 
American soldiers “went where no other troops on 
the Continent would have gone.” By the evening 
of September 28 they had penetrated from three .to 
seven miles into the German lines, the greatest gain 
that had ever been made in a similar length of time 
against the foe’s fixed defense system. Ten thousand 
prisoners had been taken and a score of villages 
captured, including the important points of Apremont 
in the Argonne Forest, and Cierges in the hilly country 
to the east. 

Of the days that elapsed before the second phase 
of the battle opened, General Pershing wrote: “In 
the chill rain of dark nights our engineers had to 
build new roads across spongy shell-torn areas, 
repair broken roads beyond No Man’s Land, and 
repair bridges. Our gunners, with no thought of 
sleep, put their shoulders to wheels and drag-ropes 
to bring their guns through the mire in support of 
the infantry, now under the increasing fire of the 
enemy’s artillery.” 

Another “Battle of the Wilderness” 

The second phase of the Argonne battle opened on 
October 4, with the fiercest fighting that had yet been 
encountered. The enemy had retreated to the 
famous “Kriemhilde Line,” which had been fortified 
to withstand, as the Germans thought, any possible 
attack. Thrown out in front of this line were 
machine-gun companies, told that they were never 
expected back in Germany. The fighting resembled 
that in the famous “Battle of the Wilderness” of the 
American Civil War but on a much vaster scale. It 
was during this fight that the celebrated “Lost 
Battalion” of the American army pushed so far into 
the enemy lines that it was surrounded, but refused 
to surrender, and fought on for days without food or 
water until help arrived. The story of how a carrier 
pigeon helped to save these men accompanies the 
article on Pigeons. 

The dash and courage of the Americans finally 
broke through the Kriemhilde Line, and on October 
10 the Argonne Forest had been cleared of the foe, 
who retreated north of the Aire. On November 1 
the final stage began with an early morning attack 


ggjf ) aristides] 

north of the Aire. The result was the collapse of the 
entire German line between the Aisne and the Meuse. 
The battle turned into a pursuit race. The Germans 
fled back to Sedan, and on November 7 American 
troops appeared opposite that town, menacing the 
railway line through Sedan, which supplied the 
enemy’s army. The British and French had won 
other great victories to the north and south and there 
was nothing now for the Germans to do but ask for 
peace. Four days later, on November 11, the armis¬ 
tice was signed (see World War). 

During the Argonne battle, which was the greatest 
ever fought by American troops, the American and 
French artillery supporting the “doughboys” fired 
3,408,000 rounds of ammunition, several times the 
amount consumed during the entire Civil War in the 
United States. 

The American Divisions engaged in the Argonne battle 
were the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 32d, 33d, 
35th, 37th, 42d, 77th, 78th, 79th, 80th, 82d, 89th, 90th 
and 91st. Commanders : General Pershing, Lieut.-Gen. 
Hunter Liggett, Lieut.-Gen. Robert L. Bullard, Maj.-Gen. 
Joseph T. Dickman, Maj.-Gen. Charles P. Summerall, 
Maj.-Gen. John L. Hines, Maj.-Gen. George H. Cameron. 

The Argonne Forest is a rocky plateau, partly wooded, 
in northeastern France, lying between the upper courses of 
the rivers Meuse and Aisne. It extends a distance of about 
60 miles north and south, and has an average breadth of 
about 19 miles. The average elevation is 1,150 feet. The 
whole of this region was overrun by the Germans in August 
1914, and the northern half remained in their hands until 
this battle in 1918. 

ARI ON. According to the Greek legend the poet- 
musician Arion once owed his life to his power of 
song. He had gone from his home in Sicily to 
Corinth in Greece to take part in a musical contest, 
and had there won the prize and embarked for home 
laden with presents. The sailors, coveting his 
treasures, told him that he must either die by his 
own hand on shipboard or throw himself into the 
sea. Arion chose the latter, but begged permission 
to sing one last song. With his lyre in his hand and 
uttering a prayer to the gods, he then threw himself 
into the sea. But a crowd of dolphins had gathered 
around the vessel, charmed by the music, and one 
of these bore Arion upon his back safely to land. 
The poet Spenser draws this picture of the scene: 

Then was there heard a most celestial sound 
Of dainty music which did then ensue. 

And, on the floating waters as enthroned, 

Arion with his harp unto him drew 

The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew; 

Even when as yet the dolphin which' him bore 
Through the Aegean seas from pirates’ view. 

Stood still, by him astonished at his lore, 

And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar. 

Little is known of the real Arion, but it is probable 
that he lived about 600 b.c. He is said to have 
invented the dithyramb, a form of choral verse. 
ARISTIDES (dr-is-tl'dez). In ancient Athens, in the 
year 490 b.c., a curious scene one day took place in 
the market-place. The citizens were assembled to 
pass a vote of “ ostracism” or exile on one or the other 
of their two leaders, Aristides and Themistocles; for 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

194 









according to the laws of that time, whenever the 
rivalry between leaders became so bitter as to en¬ 
danger the state, one of them might be sent into exile. 

When the vote was being taken, an ignorant man 
who did not know Aristides by sight asked him to 
write for him the name “Aristides” on the shell 
which was used as a ballot. 

“Has Aristides done you any injury?” asked 
Aristides. 

No, was the reply, “but I am tired of hearing 
him called ‘Aristides the Just.’ ” 

So Aristides was unjustly banished for ten years. 
It was his fairness and integrity which had won 
for him the name of “the Just,” and in the battle of 
Marathon, at which time he was one of the ten 
generals of the Athenians, his example of giving up 
his command to Miltiades, the ablest of their number, 
had helped to win that great victory over the Persians. 

At the end of his ten years of exile all Greece was 
again faced with a 
terrible invasion by 
the Persians. Aris¬ 
tides returned to 
Athens on the eve 
of the battle of 
Salamis, and helped 
his rival Themis- 
tocles to win that 
great battle which 
destroyed the Per¬ 
sian fleet. He also 
commanded the 
Athenians at the 
land battle of 
Plataea the next 
year. When many 
of the states decided 
to form an alliance 
against Persia (the 
Delian Confeder¬ 
acy), with Athens 
at their head, 

Aristides, because 
of his well-known 
honesty and fair¬ 
ness, was chosen to 
make the arrange¬ 
ments and to assess 
the expenses of the 
war on the different 
states. Yet when 
he died, about the 
year 468 b.c., he 
was so poor that he was buried at the public cost. 

The Athenian government then tardily recognized 
his many services to Athens, and gave his daughters 
dowries and his son a landed estate. 

Aristotle ( ar'is-tot-l ) (384-322 B.C.). On a sum¬ 
mer afternoon in the year 366 b.c., a stranger, a 
slender youth of 18, approached an idler in the 


market-place at Athens and inquired with a slight 
lisp the way to the house of Plato the philosopher. 

“ ’Tis plain thou art a barbarian,” replied the 
idler, smiling at the provincial cut of the stranger’s 
mantle. “From what distant land dost thou come 
that thou art ignorant the great Plato has been 
beyond the seas for many months?” 

“I am Aristotle, son of Nicomachus, who was 
physician to Amyntas, king of Macedon,” said the 
youth. “I come from Stagira on the Strymonic 
Gulf to learn philosophy, not to listen to thy insults.” 

“A sharp lad, I see,” replied the Athenian. “But 
wherefore dost thou take on such airs in Athens? 
Yet, if thou wouldst find the Academy in the master’s 
absence, walk northwest through the Dipylon gate, 
follow the Cephissus River a mile or so to the suburb 
of the Ceramicus. There thou canst see a garden 
with a high wall. If thou hearest students making 
great talk beneath the trees, apply thy uncouth ear, 

and if thou canst 
not understand a 
word of it, thou 
wilt know thou hast 
reached the place 
thou seekest.” 

The young man, 
scorning to answer 
the Athenian’s inso¬ 
lence, went on his 
way, stealing won¬ 
dering glances at the 
magnificent build¬ 
ings and temples, 
and furtively watch¬ 
ing the crowds and 
listening to the 
speech, for he knew 
his dress and accent 
marked him as a 
foreigner. 

Far away in his 
northern home, 
while he was study¬ 
ing medicine with 
his father, Aristotle 
had dreamed of 
Athens, the illustri¬ 
ous center of the 
world’s philosophy 
and art, and had 
determined to round 
out his schooling 
under the great 
Plato, whose fame had reached to the far corners of the 
earth. When his father died leaving him a fortune, 
the youth stuck to his plan, and here he was at the 
entrance to the grove of the Academia (Academy) 
where Plato taught. Plato was away, would be gone 
for three years. Well, he would wait. 

Meanwhile Athens lay before him. The political 


YOUNG ARISTOTLE IN THE MARKET-PLACE 



The market-places of ancient Greece, as you notice, were not at all like our market¬ 
places, with their warehouses and barrels and boxes piled about. They were deco¬ 
rated with statues and colonnades and were the centers for social and civic life as 
well as trade. 


contained in the Eaty 


Reference Fact-Index at 

195 


the end of t hit 


work 




















1 ARISTOTLE 

power of the city had been broken in wars with 
Sparta and Thebes, and already the menacing great¬ 
ness of Macedon was looming in the north. But 
Athens still reflected the glory of the “golden age of 
Pericles.” Idle luxury and youthful gaiety were 
arrayed on one hand; the best of learning beckoned 
on the other. Tyrants might rule, but intellect was 
free. Despite his wealth, the young Stagirite chose 
the serious life. He bought a house and began 
collecting a library. 

During those three years of waiting for Plato, 
Aristotle became a man of the world. Keen, witty, 
logical, independent, he soon disposed of scoffers. 
When Plato returned, the master recognized the 
overpowering genius of his new pupil, a genius which 
was to shatter the Platonic doctrines themselves, 
which was to lay the foundation of new learning in 
the world, and win for the green lad from Stagira 
the name of being the greatest thinker who ever 
lived. 

Teaches Alexander the Great 

Aristotle remained 20 years in Athens, until the 
death of Plato in 347 b.c. Then he was called by 
Philip of Macedon to instruct his son Alexander, 
soon to become known as “the Great.” For 12 
years the philosopher remained with the future 
conqueror of the world, first as teacher, then as 
adviser and friend. During this time, while Demos¬ 
thenes, born one year after Aristotle, was thundering 
his Philippics, warning Athens against the power 
of Macedon, Aristotle was sowing the seed of culture 
in the Macedonian mind. It was this intelligent 
influence that really saved Athenian civilization when 
the inevitable conquests came. 

When Alexander set forth on his campaigns in 


Tr ITHM ETIC 1 

Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens and established 
there a school called the Lyceum, from its nearness 
to the temple of Apollo Lyceus. In this school was a 
promenade called peripatos in Greek, and from the 
master’s habit of walking here as’ he talked to his 
pupils, his teaching came to be known as the peri¬ 
patetic philosophy. 

After the death of Alexander the Athenians 
revolted, and although Aristotle had taken no part 
in politics, his early associations with Macedon were 
seized upon by his enemies. He was accused of 
impiety, the same charge upon which Socrates had 
been put to death 76 years before. Aristotle fled to 
Chalcis in the island of Euboea, in 323 b.c., where 
he died the following year at the age of 63. 

The life of Aristotle was not a sensational one. 
He did not upset the world of his day, nor did he 
electrify his fellows with clever sayings or strange 
manners. He was above all a student. His amazing 
brain grasped at the whole field of knowledge. He 
was not only a deep thinker, but a careful observer, 
“a philosopher of facts,” an organizer and system- 
atizer of knowledge, whose greatest service was to 
establish science and philosophy on a substantial 
basis. By defining and classifying the various 
branches of knowledge—as Physics, Metaphysics, 
Psychology, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and 
Logic—he laid the foundation of all the sciences and 
philosophies of today. 

Many of Aristotle’s writings have disappeared and others 
have been ascribed to him which he probably never wrote. 
Of those that remain some of the best known are: Treatises 
on Logic (known as the ‘Organon’); ‘Rhetoric’; ‘Poetics’; 
‘History of Animals’; ‘Metaphysics’; ‘Physics’; ‘De Anima’ 
(Psychology); ‘Nicomachean Ethics’; ‘Politics’; ‘Consti¬ 
tution of Athens’. 



INTERESTING FACTS about ARITHMETIC 


A rithmetic. So 

important is rigid 
and accurate arithmetic 
in business that ma¬ 
chines have been in¬ 
vented which “do sums” 
mechanically. Among 
the most common of 
these is the adding ma¬ 
chine. In using it, all 
that is necessary to do 
in order to get a correct 
sum is to press certain 
keys for the numbers and then pull a lever. The 
machine prints the answer on a roll of paper and it 
makes no mistakes. 

Besides the adding machine there are machines 
that not only add, but subtract, multiply, and 
divide. There is also in use in many industries the 
slide rule, upon which by sliding sections to given 
numbers, the numbers can be multiplied or divided. 


Another helpful inven¬ 
tion is a new form of 
computing weighing 
scale, which may be seen 
in many grocery stores 
and meat markets. This 
scale gives the prices by 
the pound and the frac¬ 
tional part of a pound, 
so that in finding the 
amount to charge for 
a purchase, all that a 
clerk needs to do when 
weighing an article is to look where the indicator on 
the scale points. 

But with all the new inventions it is still important 
that arithmetic be studied and mastered. The 
reason for this is, not only that it is necessary to 
compute when there are no machines at hand, but 
because arithmetic in itself gives you a valuable 
training. It develops power in thinking clearly, it 


TJ/'HEN men first learned to count, Arithmetic was 
rr invented, for Arithmetic is merely the knowledge 
of numbers and their use. It enters into our daily lives 
in telling time, in making change, and in all forms of 
measuring. It is used to keep score in games. It comes 
into cooking, sewing, gardening, and other occupations of 
the home. It is necessary to the farmer, the man who 
works at a trade, the merchant, and to men and women 
in the professions. In this article are not only many 
interesting facts from the history of Arithmetic, together 
with a few quaint old problems; but also up-to-date sug¬ 
gestions for becoming rapid and accurate in performing 
arithmetical processes. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

196 







PUZZLE-PROBLEMS FROM AN OLD ARITHMETIC 


THE PROBLEM 
OF THE BOATMAN 


A boatman had to 

ferry Across a 
stream a oiolf, a 
goat, and a. basket 
of cabbages. 

His boat uuas so 
small that only 
one of the three 
besides himself 
could be contained 
in it. 

How u/as he to 
manage so that 
the u/olf should 
not be left uiith 
the goat or 
the boat 
u/ith the 
cabbages? 




Atere is tie Boatman 
Can you so/ve the problem? 


THE OLDEST 
PUZZLE-PROBLEM 
OF ALL 


As 1 was going to 
St. lues 

I met a man 
with seuen wiues, 
Each wife had 
seuen sacks. 
Each sack had 
„ . Seuen cats; 
Each cat had 

seuen kits-, 
hits, cats, sacks , wiues, 
Horn manu were ooind 

to St.lues? * 
a mo/? uritA seven wives" 


d in the Eaty Refe 


at the end of this work 





















Old Puzzle-Problems 


1 ARITHMETIC 

develops accuracy, it helps in acquiring habits of 
neatness, it serves as a training in concentration and 
perseverance, and, moreover, it gives a person the 
confidence in himself that comes from good habits, 
and a consciousness of knowledge of a practical kind. 
Arithmetic is in fact an important key in winning 
success. 

To know how methods of computing have been 
improved, and to realize the importance of arith¬ 
metic in advancing civilization, it is 
necessary only to glance at its history. 

How Long the World Has Been 
“Doing Sums” 

A knowledge of arithmetic of a 
simple kind goes back thousands of 
years. It was known among the 
ancient Chinese, the Babylonians, 
the Egyptians, and the Greeks, long 
before the Christian era; but arith¬ 
metic as we know it is only a few 
hundred years old. It was not until 
the Hindus had worked out what we call the “Arabic 
system” of numbers that modern methods of comput¬ 
ing could be developed (see Numerals). 

The Arabic notation in its present form, with its 
zero and convenient “place value” of figures (units, 
tens, hundreds, etc.) was invented by the Hindus 
between the 5th and 6th centuries a.d. It was 
carried into countries along the African coast, and 
reached Spain early in the 12th century. From the 
East and from Spain it was taken by traders into 
Italy and other European countries. It did not, 
however, come into general use in Europe until the 
16th century. 

Before the Arabic notation came into use in the 
principal European countries, numbers were usually 
written in the clumsy Roman notation, and most 
computing was done with pebbles or counters on 
lines drawn on a board. In the picture the line at 
the little girl’s right hand stands for units, the next 
for tens, the next for hundreds; the line for thousands 
which comes next is marked with a cross. The 
spaces between the lines were used for fives. This 
instrument was called an abacus, later forms of 
which consisted of beads strung on wires. Similar 
ones are in use today in China, Japan, and certain 
parts of Russia. 

Since both science and trade are dependent upon 
arithmetic, neither could make great advance until 
such primitive methods of computing together with 
the clumsy Roman notation which usually accom¬ 
panied them were replaced by the Arabic forms 
and more modern arithmetic. For this reason we 
find that from the 13th through the 16th century, 
when the world was making rapid advance in learning 
and in navigation and trade, there was a great demand 
for improved methods of computing. 

The first arithmetic to be written advising the use 
of the Arabic notation was one written by an Italian 
in 1202. The first arithmetic to be printed was 


written in Latin, and came out in Italy in 1478, a 
few years after Gutenberg invented printing and 
shortly before Columbus discovered America. Other 
early arithmetics were printed in 1484 and in 1496. 

Some Quaint Old Problems 

These early arithmetics included our modern ways 
of adding, subtracting, and multiplying, together 
with seven other methods of multiplying and several 
ways of doing division. The problems contained in 
the early arithmetics were often 
curious in character. Here are three 
of the many famous ones: 

Market Problem .—A woman going to 
market with a basket of eggs found that 
when she counted them by two’s there 
was one over, but when she counted them 
by three’s there were two over. The 
whole number was between 50 and 60; 
how many were there in the basket? 

“God Greet You ” Problem .—God greet 
you with your 100 scholars! We are not 
100 scholars; but our number and the 
number again and its half and its fourth 
are 100; how many are we? 

Chess-board Problem. —Required, the number of kernels 
of wheat needed in order to place 1 kernel on the first square 
of a chess-board, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, and so on 
for the 64 squares. Answer: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 
kernels. 

In the schools where these arithmetics were used, 
there were no recitations in arithmetic. Each stu¬ 
dent worked by himself. In some of the Latin 
schools arithmetic was studied only in the fifth and 
sixth years, and then only one hour a week was given 
to it. In the trade schools much more time was 
given to arithmetic, but even in these schools the 
work consisted in memorizing long rules and working 
difficult and often tedious problems. Little was 
known in these days about teaching. 

To aid the memory, some of the early arithmetics 
have the rules in rhyme. One of these rhymes that 
is still in use is the familiar one beginning: 

Thirty days hath September, 

April, June, and November. 

The arithmetic studied in the schools of today is 
simpler, more practical, and more easily mastered 
than that of olden times. Yet it should be remem¬ 
bered that these early books contained, along with 
material long since discarded, most of the modem 
methods of computing, and that the modern world 
owes to their authors, and the Hindus before them, 
a great debt of gratitude. 

How Arithmetics Have Improved 

Until very recent years the principal change in the 
teaching of arithmetic, as a result of modern educa¬ 
tional thought, consisted in a growing willingness 
to omit topics that had no close relation to our own 
lives. For instance, topics now wholly omitted or 
neglected are the surveyor’s table, apothecaries’ 
weight, and troy weight; greatest common divisor and 
least common multiple as special topics, complex and 
compound fractions (except those of a very simple 
nature), annual interest and most of compound 



For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

198 











New Ideas in Arithmetic 


interest, partial payments (except under the United 
States rule, and with problems involving common 
amounts, as a principal of $100 with payments like 
$10 and $25, rather than amounts like $251.42 and 
$19.79), profit and loss as a special topic, equation of 
payments, partnership, longitude and time (except 
problems based on the 15° scheme and a few others), 
and cube root. The convic¬ 
tion has been growing that 
there are too many arith¬ 
metical topics which are in¬ 
timately related to our lives 
to allow time to be spent on 
others that lack such rela¬ 
tionship. 

But more recently new 
topics have been accepted 
and other older ones have 
been receiving a new em¬ 
phasis, according as such 
topics are intimately con¬ 
cerned with our welfare. 

For example, new topics or 
topics newly emphasized are 
insurance, stocks and bonds, 
government revenues and expenditures, the banking 
business, and taxes. These are subjects for children 
studying somewhat advanced arithmetic. But a 
similar change is also affecting the problems for 
younger pupils. Problems dealing with actual situa¬ 
tions are more and more in demand for pupils of all 
ages, such as those dealing with farming, fishing, 
lumbering, mining, manufacturing, transportation of 
goods, trade, and facts of daily interest. 

In general in the study of arithmetic pupils are 
tempted to “figure” too much, and to allow the 


ARIZONA 


DOING SUMS BY MACHINERY 



This is one of the computing scales such as you see in 
grocery stores. All the clerk has to do is to put the article 
sold on the scales and a little arrow points to the total 
price—the result obtained by multiplying the weight by 
the price. 


formal side to dominate the “thinking” side. Often 
they should (1) read a problem a second or third time 
carefully, to get the exact conditions; (2) then re¬ 
state the problem in their own words, to make fully 
sure that they understand its condition; (3) state 
the number of steps required for the solution and 
show the character of each; (4) then give the ap¬ 
proximate answer. Figur¬ 
ing for the correct answer 
frequently can be omitted. 
Nevertheless it cannot be 
too strongly insisted upon 
that a complete and instant 
mastery of the “funda¬ 
mental facts” (or tables) in 
addition, subtraction, mul¬ 
tiplication, etc., is necessary 
to success in arithmetic. 
To assist in attaining this, 
use should be made of the 
drill exercises given in the 
articles on the separate 
processes (see Addition; 
Division; Multiplication; 
Subtraction). 

Aside from such drill it is hardly wise to allow 
children to receive help upon their arithmetic at 
home. The reason for this statement is that parents 
and other home friends usually have different ways of 
solving problems from those employed at school. 
Sometimes these home methods are worse, sometimes 
better, than those used at school. But they are 
almost bound to be a source of confusion. It is 
generally best, if home help seems necessary, for the 
helper to try to understand and follow the school 
method. 


The WONDERLAND of the AMERICAN SOUTHWEST 


A rizona. The state 
of Arizona — the 
newest star in the Amer¬ 
ican flag — is a land of 
amazing contrasts, for 
within its borders are 
found extremes of alti¬ 
tude, extremes of tem¬ 
perature, and extremes of rainfall surpassed in the 
United States only by California. From the shift¬ 
ing sands of the southern deserts on the Mexican 
boundary where the thermometer often reaches 130 
degrees in the summer, it is only a few hours’ ride 
by train to the mountains where snow lingers for 
seven months of the year and the winter temperature 
drops to 20 below zero. 

Nowhere in the United States do old and new jostle 
each other in sharper contrast. Thirty or forty years 
ago, most of the cities were mere mining camps— 
wild, rude, and lawless. Today they are prosperous 


Extent. Area, 113,956 square miles (fifth in size among the States); 
nearly 350 miles square. About one-quarter of the State is national 
parks, Indian reservations, etc Population (1920 census), 333,903. 

Natural Features. Numerous short isolated mountain ranges running 
northwest and southeast (highest point, in San Francisco Mountains, 
12.7?'4 feet); Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado in the northern part. Chief rivers, Colorado, Little 
Colorado, and Gila. 

Chief Products.— Copper, gold, silver; long-staple cotton, hay, wheat 
and other cereals, fruits, and vegetables in irrigated valleys of 
the southwest; cattle and dairy products; timber. 

Chief Cities .—Phoenix (capital, 30,000 population), Tucson, Bisbee. 


intelligent communities 
with handsome build¬ 
ings and excellent 
schools. A generation 
ago the large population 
of native Indians was 
still an object of dread, 
breaking out in occa¬ 
sional fierce forays upon the settlers, as their ances¬ 
tors had done for centuries past. Today the natives 
have settled down in unbroken peace on the great 
reservations set aside for them, and are contributing 
to the prosperity and upbuilding of the state by 
tilling the soil and raising cattle. On every hand 
are vivid reminders of the historic past—here the 
quaint old mission buildings of the Spanish priests, 
and there the ruined cliff-dwellings, aqueducts, and 
fortifications of a still older civilization. 

To get a picture of this land, imagine a tract 
roughly square in shape and about 350 miles each 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

199 








ARIZONA 


Where It Rains so Seldom 



This is the great Roosevelt Dam near Phoenix, Arizona, a part of the irrigation systems which have done for the Ary but extremely rich 
lands of Arizona what Father Nile has for centuries been doing for Egypt. This dam has reclaimed nearly a quarter of a million of acres in 
the famous Salt River Valley. It curves upstream because, on the principle of the arch, this form best resists the great pressure of the 
water. It constantly broadens toward the bottom because the pressure of the water increases in proportion to its depth. 


way. The northern portion is a high plateau, from 
5,000 to 7,500 feet above sea-level, with mountain 
peaks and ranges rising here and there, and gashed 
and scarred by canyons and gullies which the snow- 
fed streams have been carving for millions of years. 

A Land of Natural Wonders 

The greatest of these, the Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado, is one of the wonders of the world. Through 
a deep cut between cliffs from 1,000 to 6,500 feet 
high, the muddy river flows for 400 miles, appearing 
from the rim above as a mere ribbon sparkling in 
the noonday sun (see Grand Canyon). 

In this region, too, is the Painted Desert, with the 
brilliant reds, browns, yellows and purples of its 
clays and sandstones, giving the appearance of a 
vast canvas on which some more than human artist 
has splashed his colors. And here in the desert is 
the Petrified Forest, a tract of 60 square miles, 
strewn with the petrified logs of an old old wood¬ 
land, felled by prehistoric storms and turned to 
jasper and onyx and chalcedony during the thousands 
of years when this whole region was buried beneath 
the ocean. Everywhere are mesas, great solitary 
flat-topped masses of sandstone, their steep sides 
carved into clefts and pinnacles by the storms of 
countless ages. 

Across the state from southeast to northwest runs 
an irregular belt of mountains, 70 to 150 miles wide, 


many of whose peaks are extinct volcanoes. On the 
south this dividing ridge pitches steeply off to a 
general altitude of about 3,000 feet. From there 
on the land slopes gently to the south in great plains 
broken with valleys, and with detached mountain 
ranges and solitary peaks. 

The diversity of surface gives Arizona an equally 
varied climate, but one which is delightful and 
healthful everywhere, save in the deserts of the south¬ 
western corner, where the heat is excessive. Here lies 
the city of Yuma, one of the hottest cities of the United 
States. But the nights are invariably cool, since the 
heat radiates rapidly in the excessively dry air. 

Arizona gets little rain because the high mountain 
ranges of the Pacific coast intercept the moisture 
from that ocean. Most of the rain-clouds which 
reach it are blown up from the Gulf of Mexico. 
These have a long way to travel and are usually 
pretty thoroughly emptied before they have crossed 
Texas. On the average 292 days out of the year 
are cloudless. The dry climate and constant sun¬ 
shine are so healthful and beneficial in cases of lung 
trouble that great numbers of sanitariums have been 
built for such sufferers, who come to the state from 
all parts of the country. On account of the clear¬ 
ness of the air Dr. Percival Lowell, the noted astron¬ 
omer, chose Flagstaff for the observatory where he 
made his famous studies of the planet Mars. 


For any tubject not found in its alphabetical place tee information 

200 








PICTURE STORY OF ARIZONA 



A &. CJurtc { 


PHOEN 


XUMA 


i W& g, 


NAVAJO 


IIMOIAM 


I INDIAN ! RESER - 

yR^^HvAflON 


*Grau< 


5 CISCO 


angman 


Fiaftst! 


'PETRIFIED 
FOR&ST | 
^7>St Johns 


>rom« 


liscelianeous Manufactures 


Copper (Smelted) 


Springervitlel 


!( miA 0 - 


_C fc0i.0WlUOR 
- 1 i; sOiaN 
; A/ai:sEHvAnmr 


, nd , A N | 

01 obe|S ESER VATION , 
a f>_ f\ H r-. 

iTflAN , •' VJfrw | X , 

x JCiifton I 


PHOENE 


«~'^v‘“~Tiorence 
Casa G r ar icic^t^sa ofaftde 
Ci^?N? amS 


►cAomoi 

ville 


jurna 


uTucsorv 


Reclamation 

Projects 

□ Indian Reservations. _ 

National Monuments and Park* 

SCALE OP MILES 


oTombstono 

\ "Bisbee 


^ All Other 
% Denominations 


Roman Catholic 


9 y Cotton 


In this picture group you see some leading facts in the geography, history, and -„ .. . .. 

In the bird’s-eve view you find among other things, the location of the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and the 
routes of the earlv explorers. The map shows the location of the various Indian reservations, national monuments and parks, and the railroad 
lines by which they are reached, together with the rivers and other natural features indicated in the bird s-eye view. From the circular 
diagram we see at a glance that the greatest natural resource of Arizona is its copper, which is almost as valuable as all its agricultural and 

manufacturing interests combined. 


, and industry of Arizona, together with other striking features. 

« J~\ 1 t _ T \ _ '_ X— 1 I \ n ^ it. ^ 1 /wl Anil t V\ A 


Reference Fact-Index at t ha end of this work 


201 


contained in the Easy 





















Early History of Arizona 


1 A RIZ O nX 

Despite the scanty rainfall, the state has an 
interesting and varied plant and tree life. Most 
characteristic is the desert vegetation—the cactus, 
mesquite, agave, yucca, canaigre, and sagebrush. 
More than 100 varieties of cactus are found in Ari¬ 
zona, ranging from the giant cactus 20 to 40 feet 
high down to the little prickly pears. Many of these 
are edible, and one variety, the barrel cactus, has 
saved many a life by the store of moisture found in 
its pulpy interior. Cattlemen have learned how to 
cut down one tender variety, burn off the spines, 
and feed it to cattle in time of drought. 

Grasses of many varieties abound in many parts 
of the state, especially the north, furnishing excellent 
fodder for cattle and sheep. Some varieties seem 
to be almost independent of rainfall, and flourish 
except in times of very exceptional drought. On 
the mountains are great forests of pine, juniper,, 
cedar, fir, spruce, and other valuable woods, most of 
which are set aside as forest reserves. 

No less varied is the animal life of Arizona, ranging 
from coyotes, mountain lions, deer, antelopes, and 
wild cats in the north, to such typical creatures of the 
desert as scorpions, tarantulas, and the venomous 
Gila monsters—the only poisonous lizard known. 
Rattlesnakes and other reptiles are found in many 
places, and there are many kinds of birds—from the 
quail and wild turkey of the mountains to the tiny 
humming-birds, of which Arizona has 14 species. 

What Irrigation Has Done 

Under irrigation large parts of Arizona are becom¬ 
ing valuable agricultural land. The soil of the val¬ 
leys is rich and marvelously fertile, producing 
Egyptian cotton of marvelous quality, wheat, barley, 
sugar beets, alfalfa, hay, fruits, vegetables, and other 
temperate and semi-tropical products in astonishing 
profusion when supplied with water. Arizona leads 
the nations in the yield of its hay crops per acre, and 
from three to five crops of alfalfa can be grown every 
year. But only about 2 per cent of the total area is 
under cultivation, and the future of Arizona’s agricul¬ 
ture depends on reclamation projects. The Roosevelt 
Dam, near Phoenix the capital, has reclaimed nearly 
a quarter of a million acres in the famous Salt River 
valley, which lies in the heart of the southern low¬ 
lands of the state. The great weir dam near Yuma, 
where the Gila River flows into the Colorado, has 
wrested another 100,000 acres from the desert. 
When the various projects under way are all com¬ 
pleted, it is estimated that 2,000,000 acres will have 
been reclaimed. 

Stock-raising is still a leading industry of the state, 
which contains some of the greatest cattle ranges left 
in the country. The cowboy is making his last stand 
in these great unsettled regions, but his days here as 
elsewhere are numbered. Gradually the great ranges 
are being broken up into small homesteads, and con¬ 
verted into dairy farms and tilled lands. 

Arizona’s chief source of wealth is still in its mines. 
One out of every four of its adult males is engaged 


in some phase of the mining industry, and the total 
value of its mineral production is in some years 
greater than the production of any other state in 
the union. Arizona is the greatest copper producing 
region in the world, and it also produces large quan¬ 
tities of gold, silver, lead, as well as some of the rarer 
minerals. Bisbee is the greatest copper mining center, 
and Douglas, the “Smelter City,” smelts great quan¬ 
tities of ore from Bisbee and from Mexico. Arizona also 
has untouched coal deposits of vast potential value. 

Arizona is still one of the most scantily populated 
states, having only a little more than two inhabitants 
to the square mile. In area it is the 5th largest 
state, but in population it ranks 45th. A large 
proportion of the white population is made up of 
the Latter Day Saints or Mormons, who came down 
from Utah and composed the first wave of agricultural 
pioneers. 

The most interesting element of the population 
is the Indians, of whom 30 tribes are represented 
in the Indian schools. Chief of these are the Navajos 
( nav'a-hos ), famous for the artistic skill with which 
they weave blankets and fashion silver ornaments. 
The Hopis are a peace-loving and highly developed 
race, remarkable for the tenacity with which they 
retain their ancient tribal customs, such as the 
rattlesnake dance in which the performers hold live 
snakes in their mouths. The Apaches, once blood¬ 
thirsty and treacherous, the most dreaded foes of the 
settlers, are now chiefly famous for their cleverly 
woven baskets. Scattered over the state are the 
ruined cliff-dwellings and 'pueblos, in which formerly 
dwelt thriving Indian communities of a relatively 
high degree of culture (see Cliff-Dwellers; Pueblo 
Indians). 

The first Europeans to explore the territory now 
included in Arizona were probably Fray Marcos of 
Niza and a negro companion called “Little Stephen” 
who traveled northward from Mexico in 1539 to the 
Zuni villages. The negro was killed by the Indians— 
the first of a long line of tragedies marking the early 
history of Arizona; but Fray Marcos undaunted 
returned in 1540, to act as guide for the famous 
expedition of Coronado. Reports of fabulous wealth 
stored in the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” as the region 
of the Zufiis in New Mexico was called, fired the 
explorers to press on in spite of hostile tribes and other 
difficulties. Coronado spent many months in the 
quest, but no gold was found. Other adventurers 
met with the same ill success. 

During the 17th and 18th centuries some progress 
in Christianizing the natives was made by the rival 
efforts of Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. Two 
of the early missions still stand. But settlement was 
slow, and the first important city to arise was Tucson, 
established as a presidio (garrisoned post) in 1776. 

Under Spanish and Mexican rule Arizona was con¬ 
sidered a part of New Mexico. The first considerable 
wave of white immigration came in during the first 
quarter of the 19th century. In 1848, as a result of 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see information 

202 






NATURE’S ENGINEERING IN ARIZONA 



Taking the He 


Ares before man undertook such engineering feats as the Roosevelt Dam, Nature was busy upon such examples of architecture and engineer- 
here The Rainbow Bridge was carved by running water. The “Monuments” in the next picture were once part of great 
roc if masses Frost, water, and wind gradually wore away the softer parts of the rock, leaving these fragments standing. That is also the 

ihe ^rent mesa in the lower right-hand picture was made, and the “leaning tower” above. Notice how rude steps have been made 
ki the h incfine leading to the pueblos of the Hopi Indians above. In the lower left-hand picture notice the castle-like dwelling of some ancient 
in tne incline leaui g v chie{ perc hed in an almost inaccessible cave, well up the side of the cliff. 


the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


203 


at the end of this 


work 


ontained in 































ARIZONA 


Bayeta Helps Weave the Blanket 



the Mexican War, the United States gained both New 
Mexico and the part of Arizona which lies north of the 
Gila River. In 1854 the remaining part, south of the 
Gila, was obtained from Mexico by the Gadsden 
Purchase. In 1863 Arizona was made a separate 
territory. Women were granted full suffrage in 
1912, the same year in which the territory acquired 
statehood. Prohibition was voted in 1915. 

Though the newest of American states, Arizona 
is one of the most progressive. Provisions have been 
written into the constitution for the initiative, 


referendum, and recall. Laws have been passed 
regulating the employment of women and children, 
fixing a minimum wage for women, and providing 
for employers’ liability and compulsory compensation 
for workmen engaged in dangerous occupations. 
There is a state university at Tucson, and two normal 
schools. The percentage of illiteracy is high—more 
than 20 per cent—due to the large Mexican popula¬ 
tion; but liberal appropriations have been made by 
the legislature to Americanize and educate foreigners 
in night schools. 




AYETA ( bdy-e'td ) was a little Navajo 
(n&v'a-hd) Indian girl. She lived among 
the mountains of northeastern Arizona, 
but not always in the same place. In 
that high dry country there is little game for hunters 
and few places for gardens. By living in small groups 
and moving around, the Navajos can find 
enough water and grass for flocks of sheep. 

So they are wandering shepherds and not 
village Indians, like most tribes. And, 
as they have little else to work with 
beside wool, the squaws spend their time 
weaving beautiful blankets and rugs. 

In the winter Bayeta's family group 
lived in round earth-covered huts on a 
mesa or high tableland in the midst of the 
desert. She was always glad when spring 
came. Then they all went up into a 
deep narrow rock-walled valley or canyon 
to five during the long hot summer. 

The braves and boys and dogs went 
before to drive the sheep. The squaws, 

papooses, and pack horses and ponies lik - this - for th - e little Navajo 
followed. Old people and young children e^is of today have just such 
were allowed to ride. 

Down, down, down from the high mesa they 
journeyed, over a narrow winding trail. At last they 



Bayeta probably had a doll 


reached the grassy canyon. It had a spring of clear 
cold water. The bank of a little stream was shaded 
by cottonwood trees. There was a peach orchard, 
pink with bloom. High on a rock shelf of the canyon 
wall stood a street of empty houses, built by the cliff- 
dwellers. They were of stone and so well built that 
they had stood there for hundreds of 
years. But the Navajos would not use 
the houses of those strange people who 
had died so long ago. They thought it 
would bring bad luck. Besides they liked 
to be down on the grassy floor of the 
valley. 

Bayeta’s grandfather, father, uncles, 
brothers, and cousins built a summer 
hut of poles and bark in three days. It 
was just large enough for cooking and for 
everyone to sleep in. The squaws made 
a fire under the smoke hole and put on 
a big kettle of mutton stew. They made 
corn bread and coffee. When they had 
rolled up the blankets and sheepskins used 
for bedding, the housework was done. 

Everyone had to work. The braves 
and boys and dogs went out with the 
sheep. The strong young women made a garden. 
The little girls took care of the babies. The older 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

204 




















































































































































































) Making the Colors 


ARIZONA 


women did the cooking and worked at their looms. 
Bayeta had no papoose to mind, so she helped her 
grandmother get ready to weave a blanket. 

There was so much to do, and that is why the 
Navajos must charge high prices for their blankets. 
After the sheep were sheared, the fleeces of wool 
have to be beaten 


together, from top to bottom. Then she laced the 
warp frame into the loom frame with ropes, and 
stretched the warp threads tight. Squatting on a 
sheepskin in front of the loom, she began to weave in 
the colored filling yams, working from the bottom. 

She had no pattern to follow. All winter she had 


and shaken free of 
dust and picked 
clean of twigs and 
burs. Then Bayeta 
and her grand¬ 
mother had to go 
out on the desert 
and dig the soapy 
roots of the yucca 
plant to wash the 
fleeces. The little 
girl sat on the 
ground and pulled 
the snowy fleeces 
apart into little 
bunches. Her grand¬ 
mother combed the 
wool between wire 
brushes, and spun 
and twisted it into 
yam with a spindle. 
Two, three, even five 


RUINS OF A CLIFF-DWELLING 




been thinking of the 
blanket and making 
a picture of it in her 
mind. She liked to 
talk to Bayeta 
about it. 

“Look, Bayeta,” 
she said to the little 
girl. “This is how 
I will make my 
blanket. Red is the 
color of fire and of 
the sun. Black is for 
water—rain. Those 
are the colors of life. 
Without heat and 
moisture there is no 
life. There is more 
sunshine than rain 
on the desert, so my 
blanket will have 
much red in it. But 
there will be a great 


fjmpc qVip sniin thp Here are the ruins of one of those cliff-dwellings beneath a hanging rock that Bayeta’s deal of black in it, 
times, sne spun tne ™ re le a felt superstitious about. And no wonder! We wouldn't want to live in such . 

varn, until it was mysterious old ruins either, would we, with their memorials of strange people lying tOO. iSlaCk IS the 

fine and smooth about » P ieces of broken pottery of woven cloth » and the ashes of color of the north, 

and evenly twisted. anC,en of mountains, storm 

When she had enough yarn for her blanket she clouds, men, and of all rough strong things. It is 


dyed it many colors. 

To dye red she had dried cochineal insects from 
Mexico, and for blue she had lumps of indigo. These 
she had bought of a blanket dealer. The other 
colors she made herself. She and Bayeta gathered 
big baskets full of the bright golden flower heads of 
a yellow aster. A light yellow could be made from 
peach leaves, a dark yellow from chips of rabbit 
wood. For black there were sumac leaves, a yellow 
clay, and the gum of the pinyon pine tree, all boiled 
together. Earths with salt and alum in them w T ere 
needed to “fix” the colors so that they would not 
fade. For days and days Bayeta’s grandmother 
chopped roots, and pounded bark and leaves, burned 
gums to ashes, and boiled and fixed and strained her 
dyes. At last she had earthenware pots full of clear 
bright colors. 

Soon the thorny shrubs of the canyon were gay 
with skeins of rainbow hues. Bayeta wound the 
yarns into balls while her father set up the loom. 
In the pleasant shade of a cottonwood tree he drove 
two stout posts into the earth. Across the top and 
bottom he tied stout beams. This was the loom 
frame. Her grandmother made a “warp” frame of 
four slender poles, bound at the corners. On this 
she wound plain white “warp” threads, very close 


-- -, -- J - O o 

the color of mourning too, of sorrow and bad luck. 

Life Story the Colors Tell 

“Blue is the color for women and of the soft clear 
southern sky. Yellow is for the west, the setting 
sun, the end of the journey. Green is for spring, 
youth, hope, and for little valleys like this. Brown 
and gray are for decay and death, for the waste 
places of the desert. White is for the east, for fresh 
morning, childhood, and innocence.” 

“Why, grandmother,” said Bayeta, “you can tell 
a story with colors.” 

“Yes, little one, you must know the meaning of 
colors, or you can never weave a good Navajo 
blanket. Our patterns have a meaning, too. 

“Every line and stripe, square and diamond, 
triangle, cross, zig-zag, and fret has a meaning. A 
broad angle is for the arching sky. A sharp angle 
turned upside down is a whirlwind. Lines and bands 
are trails and roads on the journey of life. A square 
is the symbol of the four winds or the four seasons. 

“A row of small squares joined by straight lines 
shows the houses of related families. A diamond is 
the country of a group of families; if stair-stepped it 
is a mesa rimmed with mountains. Zig-zags are for 
lightning; if tangled together, for serpents. A 
straight line with dropping bars is a raincloud. 


_ Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

contained m the Laty nererenc 

205 







ARIZONA 



Romance In Grandmother’s Life 


WHERE THE NAVAJO BLANKETS ARE WOVEN 



In “woolen mills” like this, where the entire “plant” consists of a crude hand loom, the finest of Navajo blankets are made, some of them 
selling for several thousand dollars. These Navajos have set up their loom in a canyon. A rug 5 by 10 feet, say, requires a month for 
making, while a very large rug will take a whole year. The Indians supply everything for the work. The wool comes from their sheep 
and they make the dye from herbs. Usually two work to a loom, one combing the wool and spinning the yarn, the other doing the weaving. 


Frets are for mesas and canyons. A cross of narrow 
lines shows an enemy on the trail. The swastika 
cross (thus, Ui) is for good luck.” 

All summer Bayeta waited on her grandmother 
as she sat on her heels before the loom, pushing rude 
shuttles of colored yarn between the warp threads 
to form the pattern in her mind. The old squaw 
chuckled over happy memories or shut her lips tight 
over sad ones. Bayeta often sat beside her. 

“There, little one, is the mesa where I was born, 
with mountains around it. Here is the desert with 
its endless trails. Here the green little canyon. 
Seven families stayed together. Here are their sum¬ 
mer ‘hogans’ (huts), tied with a strong bond of love. 
Here is the stream in which my lover and I washed 
our hands when we were married.” 

“Are you weaving the story of your life, grand¬ 
mother? How beautiful! What will you do with 
your blanket when it is done?” 

“It must be sold. Our gardens grow little food. 
We need clothing. We have no reeds to make baskets. 
We have to buy our cooking and dye pots of the 
Pueblos. We must buy coffee and meal of the 
trader. Bayeta must have some good shoes and a red 
calico dress, and a book for the government school.” 

For any subject not found in 


“No, no, grandmother. I want none of them. 
Your blanket is a part of you. It’s your story, your 
book, your heart. Whoever buys it cannot read it. 
He will just see colors and figures. We see in it the 
story of your whole life.” 

How Bayeta Got Her Name 
“Never mind. I can make another next year, and 
it will be different because I shall have lived another 
year. The most beautiful rug I ever wove was for 
my wedding. It was all red and black, blue and 
green and white. It was a famous bayeta. You 
were named for it. Hard times came and it had 
to be sold. As I grow older and older, there is more 
brown and gray and yellow in my blankets. The 
colors and pattern are memories. Over and over I 
weave my story, and as the moons go by, the story 
changes. Now this blanket is done. I’ll make four 
strong black tassels at the corners to tie my life to the 
four corners of the earth.” 

When the blankets of all the squaws were finished 
they were hung on ropes for everyone to admire. 
The poorest plainest ones were kept for bedding. 
The fine ones were carried away to be sold. Bayeta 
rode to the traders with her grandmother. They had 
a pony load of food and clothing to fetch home. 

place see information 


its alphabetical 

206 
































A State of Varied Products 


ARKANSAS 



But they were both sad. That night Bayeta slept 
close to her grandmother. The dark hid her tears. 

“Grandmother,” she said, “your blanket was the 
most beautiful of all. When I grow up I’m going to 
weave one just like it.” 


“No, little one, you cannot remember the pattern. 
You will weave your own story. Every life is 
different, and everyone changes with the years. That 
is why no two Navajo blankets are ever exactly 
alike.” 


FARMS, FORESTS, and MINES of the “BEAR STATE” 


\ RKANSAS ( ar'kan-SQ ;). 

In the whole state 
of Arkansas, which is a 
little larger than New 
York state, there are 
not so many people as 
in the single city of 
Philadelphia. Yet this 
state, three-fourths of which is covered with forests, 
probably has as great a variety of products as any 
other state in the Union. On account of the varying 
height of its land, nearly every crop that is grown 
from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico can be 
found there. 

Nearly every mineral is mined in the mountainous 
regions, and the state is noted for producing about 
one-half of all the aluminum ore (bauxite) produced 
in the world. It has one of the few diamond mines 
outside of South Africa, and its industries include 
the raising of ostriches. The Arkansas diamond mine 
is located in Pike County, and since it was first opened, 
in 1906, about 2,000 stones have been found. 

Arkansas is also noted for its whetstones, and 
every workman who has to sharpen tools knows the 
value of the stones made from the rock called novac- 
ulite, found in the Ouachita Mountains in the western 
part of the state. The making of these whetstones 
is an important industry in seven counties. Among 
other minerals that are profitably mined are coal, 
iron, and manganese. Natural gas in small quan¬ 
tities is found in several places. 

The “Big Three” of Arkansas 

Cotton, corn, and timber, however, are the “big 
three” among the state’s products. The value of the 
cotton crop is more than half the value of all the 
other crops combined. Arkansas also has a big apple 
crop and many other fruits are grown. Interesting 
experiments have also been made in the growing of 
rice. For this purpose the government undertook 
to irrigate certain lands near Little Rock, and 
obtained the largest rice yield per acre in the United 
States. 

With so large a forest area it is not surprising that 
Arkansas has some of the largest sawmills in the 
world, and the largest car factory. The timber 
resources have only been touched, and a great share 
of the wooded area has been taken over by the 
government as forest preserves. The trees include 
almost all the principal soft and hard woods grown 
in America—about 100 varieties altogether. 

Arkansas boasts more mineral springs tnan any 
other state, one of them discharging 9,000 barrels of 


water a minute. At Hot 
Springs, about 45 miles 
southwest of the capital, 
Little Rock, the United 
States government has 
taken over an area of 
911 acres in which are lo¬ 
cated nearly 50 springs. 
The reputation of this famous health resort is equal to 
that of many of the great spas of Europe. The 
springs are said to owe their curative properties to 
the presence of a radium emanation or radium gas in 
the water. It is estimated that 125,000 people, or about 
twice the entire population of Little Rock, visit the 
springs every year. Some writers think that it was the 
rumors of these springs circulated among the Indians, 
which set the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon on his 
search for the fabled Fountain of Youth. 

Although the state is comparatively old there are 
still many vast unexplored caves, especially in the 
region of the Ozark Mountains in the northwestern 
part. The highest peak in the state is less than 
2,800 feet. In the east and south the land rises very 
little above the level of the Mississippi River, which 
makes the eastern boundary of the state and often 
overflows its banks, causing swamps and marshes. 
Arkansas is very nearly square in form. 

Little Rock, the capital of the state, had 196 white 
inhabitants as long ago as 1785. It was named 
“La Petite Roche” (the little rock) by Sieur Bernard 
de la Harpe, in 1722, who visited the region in search 
of a mythical emerald mountain. Texarkana, the 
second largest city, is, as its name indicates, on the 
border between Arkansas and Texas, part lying in 
each state. 

The state has four agricultural colleges, and a 
Farmers’ Institute in the capital which has con¬ 
ducted some important agricultural movements. 
The state university is located at Fayetteville, 
on the Ozark plateau in the extreme northwestern 
part of the state. Separate schools are provided 
for whites and negroes. The “Bear State,” as 
Arkansas is nicknamed, has Regnant populi (“the 
people rule”) for its motto. 

The name Arkansas was that of an Indian tribe 
found by the first explorers of the region, who were 
mostly French. The first white settlement was made 
at Arkansas Post in 1685. The country was a part 
of Louisiana Territory until 1812, when it was 
included in the newly formed Missouri Territory. 
It was not formally organized as a state until June 
15, 1836. 


Extent .—North and south, about 250 miles; east and west, from 175 
to 275 miles. Area, 53,335 square miles. Population, (1920 census), 
1,752,204. 

Natural Features .—Ozark Mountains in northwest; chief ranges, 
Boston and Ouachita; (highest point. Magazine Mountain, 2,785 
feet). Chief rivers: Mississippi, St. Francis, White, Arkansas, 
Red, Ouachita. Hot mineral springs in center of State. 

Chief Products .—Cotton and cotton products (oil, cottonseed, oil 
cake); corn, rice and other cereals, hay, fruit; lumber and timber 
products; coal, bauxite, lead, zinc. 

Chief Cities .—Little Rock (capital, 65,000 population). Fort Smith, 
Pine Bluff, Hot Springs. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

207 







ARKANSAS 


AR KWRIGHT 


ARKANSAS AND ITS VARIED PRODUCTS 


Cotton and lumber are distributed 
over a large part of the stute 



Principal Religious Denominations 



■■ 

Presby 

X 

2 o 

All 

B aptist 

Methodist 

terion 

'u 

£j 

84 
0 a 

Others 


From the circular diagram you see at a glance the relative importance of the varied products of Arkansas, and on the map the location of 
its natural resources. Fix the circle and its divisions in your mind and you are not likely to forget in your geography class that lumber and 
timber are nearly a fourth in amount of the total product of the state, while the cotton and com interests are only a little less extensive and 
about equal to each other. To the value of the cotton we must add about one-fifth for the value of cotton-seed oil and oil cake. 


At the time of the Civil War it was not clear at first 
whether the Unionists or the Secessionists were in 
the majority. Finally Arkansas cast in its lot with the 
Confederate States. Little Rock was taken by the 
Union Army in 1863 and this event ended the Seces¬ 
sionist reign in Arkansas. The Unionists called 
a convention in Little Rock in 1864 and formed 
a new constitution, which, however, the United 
States Senate refused to accept. It was not until 
June 22, 1868, that Arkansas was readmitted to 
the Union. Like other southern states, Arkansas 
suffered much from the evils of the “carpet-bag” era 
in the interim. 

Arkansas is one of the states which has the initiative 
and referendum. By this method the people can put 
a law on the statute book regardless of the action of 
the state legislature. When the legislature refused to 
pass a bill against child labor, by using the initiative 
and referendum the people made it a part of the 
state law. 

Arkwright, Richard (1732-1792). On a stormy 
night in the year 1765, a foot traveler knocked at the 
door of a thatched cottage in a little village of Lanca¬ 
shire, England, seeking shelter. The light of a candle 


and the whirring of a wheel guided him to that dwelling 
rather than to any other of the group. A cotton- 
spinner was there lengthening his day of toil, while 
his neighbors slept. At his knock the candle was 
blown out and the noise stopped. After a moment 
a voice asked: 

“Who knocks?” 

“Dick Arkwright.” 

“A spinner?” 

“No, a barber and hair buyer from Bolton. I can 
pay for a lodging for the night.” 

When the stranger was admitted and the candle 
relighted, there was disclosed a strange spinning 
apparatus with eight spindles. The host was James 
Hargreaves and this was his newly invented spinning 
jenny, which he used secretly because of fear of 
jealous rivals. The traveler was Richard Arkwright, 
who was to become the inventor of the spinning frame. 
At this time Arkwright was 33 years old. He was 
born in Preston, a seaport town north of Liverpool, 
and was the youngest of 13 children of a poor laborer. 
At the age of 10 he was apprenticed to a barber in 
Bolton, and for 20 years his life was passed in a cellar 
shop, shaving workingmen at a penny a shave. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

208 






















SOME OF THE THINGS FOR WHICH ARKANSAS IS FAMOUS 





-jan 


The 
Rest of 
the Wort 


Arkansas 


Half of the World’s 
Aluminum Supply 


Largest DiamondField 
in North America 


<5 


eait 






Vast Deposits of 
Whetstone Rock 


Crops of both 
North and South 


So great is the variety of her natural resources that Arkansas may be called a little world in itself. The chief sources of her 
agricultural wealth are corn and cotton, but she produces in rich abundance many varieties of fruit, vegetable, and grain peculiar 
to both northern and southern climates. She has immense forests and an extensive milling industry to work them up into lumber, 
vast deposits of whetstone rock, great ostrich farms, the largest diamond field in North America, and it is highly probable that the 

aluminum in mother’s kitchen utensils was “born” in Arkansas. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


209 


a t 


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ARMADA, SPANISH 


[ARKWRIGHT 



It is doubtful if he could then read and write, but 
he “had notions in his head.” He became a hair 
buyer and wigmaker, and it was in the course of his 
business that he found himself at Hargreaves’ door. 

Hargreaves’ jenny 
could spin eight threads 
at once, but the yarn was 
still inferior. Arkwright 
set to work to invent a new 
machine which should spin 
a much larger number of 
threads, of any degree of 
fineness and hardn ess. He 
took out his first patent 
in 1769. His spinning 
frame consisted of two 
sets of rollers turning on 
each other like those of a 
clothes wringer. One 
roller of each pair was of steel, finely grooved, the 
other was covered with leather. The fibers of the 
cotton plant were drawn through the grooves, com¬ 
pressed, and stretched. Spindles then took the yarn 
and twisted it. His first spinning mill, at Nottingham, 
was worked by 
horses. Later he used 
water power, and 
finally the improved 
steam engine which 
James Watt was j ust 
then inventing. 

Arkwright’s won¬ 
derful invention in¬ 
spired the jealousy 
of rivals. His pat¬ 
ents were attacked 
and declared void, 
and his spinning 
frame was copied 
with impunity. 

However, they 
“couldn’t copy his 
mind,” and by 
further improve¬ 
ments and good 
business manage¬ 
ment he won a 
comfortable fortune. 

Arkwright’s ex¬ 
ecutive ability is 
shown by his part 
in organizing the 
factory system. Be¬ 
fore Arkwright’s 
time spinning was a 
cottage industry, 
and much of the 
weaving was also done in private houses. The 
workmen labored irregularly, and the product was 
far from uniform in quality. Arkwright brought his 


workmen under a factory roof, compelled cleanliness, 
order, and regularity of hours, and established stand¬ 
ards in quality and quantity of fabrics produced. 
He put into practice the principles of industrial 
economy that Adam Smith taught—the saving 
accomplished by organized, disciplined division of 
labor. 

After he was 50 years old Arkwright educated 
himself to fit his new station in life. In 1787 he was 
knighted by King George III. Thenceforth he was 
known as Sir Richard Arkwright. He died in his 
61st year, having done much to lay the foundations 
of the industrial prosperity of Great Britain, and to 
usher in a new industrial age for the civilized world. 
ARMADA, Spanish (1588). Bonfires were blazing 
all along the Channel coast of England, and their 
flames shooting high in the air carried the news from 
hilltop to hilltop through the greater part of England 
that the Great Armada was at hand. This was an 
enormous fleet which Catholic Philip II of Spain had 
gathered to conquer Protestant England. Its sailing 
had been delayed a full year by the daring feat of 
Sir Francis Drake who had sailed boldly into the 
Spanish harbor of Cadiz and destroyed the ships and 


supplies there, thus “singeing the Spanish King’s 
beard.” But now at last about 132 Spanish vessels 
were ready, some of them huge high-decked men-of- 



R. ARKWRIGHT 


Inventor of the Spinning Frame 


SIR FRANCIS DRAKE FINISHING THE GAME OF BOWLS 



“There’s plenty of time to win this game and thrash the Spaniards too.” Can’t you hear him saying it’ Drake 
with the bowl in his hand, calmly refuses to listen to Lord Howard’s suggestion that they put to sea at once* 
The English preparations had been so well made that now, when the Armada was at hand, Drake knew that 
they had nothing to do but wait for the propitious hour to arrive to give battle. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

210 









ARMENIA 



Iarmadillo 

war, some of them strange old galleys rowed by oars, 
and were sailing up the English Channel in a great 
half-moon seven miles from tip to tip, to conquer that 
heretic land and restore it to the true Catholic faith. 

When word of the Armada’s approach had first 
been brought to the commander of the English fleet, 
Lord Howard of Effingham, he chanced to be ashore 
at Plymouth—so the old story tells us—playing at 
bowls with some of his captains. Lord Howard was 
for putting to sea at once, but doughty Sir Francis 
Drake calmly remarked: 

“There’s plenty of time to win this game, 
and to thrash the Spaniards too.” 


addition some species are so constructed that when 
danger threatens they roll themselves up into tight 
round balls, with head and feet tucked in and nothing 
showing but the thick hard plates of their armored 
backs. Even a jaguar has difficulty in knowing what 
to do with such a living cannon ball. 

The armadillo has very short legs, but it can run 
with considerable speed for short distances. It can 
also bury itself in an incredibly short time by the use 
of its long powerful claws. The great armadillo has 
a body three feet long and a tail almost as long, 

THE ARMADILLO IN ITS FLEXIBLE 
COAT OF MAIL 



Armadillos are like the knights of the Middle Ages in the matter of dressing 
in “hardware,” but they don’t go about looking for trouble as the knights 
did. They are of a very peaceable disposition. The great naturalist Darwin 
tells how one of the South American cowboys sharpened his knife on the 
horny back of one of them, and Mr. Armadillo didn’t object in the least! 


The “Little Hawks” Pluck the Spaniards 

So the game went on. Next day the English 
ships poured out of the Channel ports in pursuit 
of the Spaniards. They were smaller than the 
ponderous vessels of the Spaniards, but they 
could sail two feet for the Spaniards’ one. For a 
week they hung on the rear of the foe, now ad¬ 
vancing, now nimbly retiring, and “plucking the 
feathers” of the Invincible Armada one by one. 

When at last the Spaniards anchored off 
Calais, there to get word of the army that was 
to join them from the Netherlands, the English¬ 
men sent fire-ships drifting down on them at 
midnight. In panic the Spaniards cut their 
anchor cables and put out to sea. 

At dawn the little English “sea hawks” 
closed in again and worked terrible havoc, 
crowding the clumsy galleons upon one an¬ 
other, sending some to the bottom, and killing 
thousands of men with their deadly cannon 
fire. The Spaniards lost hope of success and 
thought only of escape. 

But worse still was to come. As they fled before 
a southerly wind, meaning to return to Spain by 
sailing around the north of Scotland and Ireland, 
terrific gales beat upon them and dashed many of 
their vessels on those rocky coasts. The bodies of 
thousands of drowned Spaniards were washed ashore, 
and others were killed by the lawless inhabitants 
when they floated or swam to land. Of all that 
great fleet, less than half returned to Spain. 

Thus English courage and seamanship had delivered 
that land from one of the greatest dangers that ever 
menaced it. Though they were vastly inferior in 
equipment—for . niggardly Queen Elizabeth had 
turned a deaf ear to urgent appeals for powder and 
other supplies—the daring English seamen had 
broken Spanish sea power for all time. The way was 
at last open for England to lay the foundations of the 
trade, colonial empire, and sea power which make her 
today the “mistress of the seas.” 

ARMADIL'LO. Did you ever see a pig-like animal 
that wears armor? The armadillo of Central and 
South America is such a creature, for the whole back 
and sides of his body are covered with jointed bony 
plates like the mail worn by medieval knights. In 


while others are only five or six inches. Fossil forms 
six feet in length have been found, looking much like 
giant turtles. 

In color armadillos are usually brownish-black, 
marked with yellow above and yellowish-white under¬ 
neath. They are habitual diggers, making their 
burrows in the dry soil of arid regions. Some species 
are found as far north as Texas and others as far south 
as Argentina. Armadillos fare forth chiefly at night 
to seek their food which consists of insects, worms, 
roots, fruit, and sometimes carrion. The natives 
use their flesh for food and make their bony backs 
into handsome baskets. 

Armadillos are members of a group of toothless or almost 
toothless animals which includes the ant-eaters. Scientific 
name of great armadillo,* Priodon gigas; of the apar (one 
that rolls into a ball), Tolypeutes tricinctus. 

ARMENIA ( ar-me'nl-d ). One day late in the 3d 
century of the Christian era, a beautiful Roman 
maiden Ripsim6 was brought into the palace of 
Tiridates, king of the Armenians. She had fled 
from Rome, according to the story, to escape the 
emperor Diocletian who had sought to marry her, 
though she was a Christian and a nun. Tiridates, 
struck by her great beauty, also sought to make her 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-In 


a e x at r n e 




211 






ARMENIA 



Romance of Ripsime 


his wife, but she refused, saying she would not give 
up her faith or break her vows by marrying a heathen 
king; and when Tiridates attempted to use force 


he went out into the fields and ate herbs. And it 
was not until he had ordered the release of Gregory 
the Illuminator, a Christian missionary whom he 





Parking Place for Ox Carts' 


Armenian Girl 


Spinning within Protecting Walls 


Fig* Going to Market 


The pretty Armenian girl in the upper left-hand comer of this group is a type of thousands who were sold into slavery while Armenia was 
under Turkish rule. The ox-carts on the right have been left there by the peasants who have come to town and are marketing in the neigh¬ 
boring street. The woman at work in the center shows the type of spinning wheel and style of spinning which has been employed in Armenia 
for centuries. Below are women spinning in the basement of a massive stone house—almost a fortress—such as are common in Armenia 
as refuges from Turkish attacks. On the left are peasants with their donkeys loaded with figs on the way to market. Although Armenia is 
a high plateau, the summers are so hot that semi-tropical fruits are cultivated in the deeper valleys. 


she threw him to the floor and broke his diadem 
in pieces. 

In his anger he caused Ripsime and her compan¬ 
ions to be put to death. Soon afterwards Tiridates 
was seized with remorse; and like Nebuchadnezzar 


had thrown into prison 15 years before, that he was 
restored to sanity. St. Gregory brought about his 
conversion, and thereupon Tiridates decreed that 
Christianity should thenceforth be the official religion 
of the Armenian people. 


For any subject 


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212 


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| Tragic Fate of Armenia 


This story is preserved in the ancient religious 
writings of Armenia, and if you should visit the con¬ 
vent of Etchmiadzin, where the Catholicos or head of 
the Armenian church has his residence, you will find 
a church dedicated to the memory of St. Ripsime. 
From Etchmiadzin it is not a long journey across the 
plain to snow-capped Mt. Ararat, on which according 
to tradition Noah’s ark finally found a resting place. 

When the patriotic Armenian, before the World 
War, visited the shrines on the slopes of Ararat, he 
was constantly reminded of the misfortunes that had 
come upon his nation. If he looked to the north¬ 
east he saw that part of ancient Armenia which was 
conquered by Russia. If he looked to the west he 
saw another part that was long held by Turkey. 
And if he looked to the south he saw still a third part 
which was taken by Persia. Thus ancient Armenia was 
all divided up among other states and the Armenians 
had no country they could call their very own. 

Armenia lies in Asia south of the Caucasus Moun¬ 
tains, between the Black Sea and the Caspian at the 
base of the peninsula of Asia Minor. To the south 
lies Mesopotamia, the fertile valley of the Tigris and 
the Euphrates rivers. Armenia itself is a high pla¬ 
teau which might be compared to North Dakota 
both in size and climate. The winters are very cold 
and the summers are very hot. The oriental sun 
touches the scenery with brilliance and turns the 
sky and lakes to sapphire, but the land itself seems 
barren and untidy. Yet rivers are numerous and 


armistice] 

Armenians have reached a high stage of culture and 
education. 

The tragic fate of the Armenians under Turkish 
rule culminated during the World War, when perhaps 
600,000 were massacred or done to death by the 
Turks with the knowledge if not the approval of 
their German allies. 

Armenia has been the home of the Armenian people since 
prehistoric times. It appears as a kingdom in Assyrian 
inscriptions under the name of Urartu. It formed part of 
the old Persian Empire and was brought under the rule 
first of Alexander the Great and then of the Romans. 
Legend traces the descent of its people from Haik, son of 
Togarmah, great-grandson of Noah. Estimates of the 
Armenian population are very uncertain; before the war 
there were probably 3,000,000 in Turkey, Russia, and 
Persia. The area of the Armenian plateau is about 140,000 
square miles. 

After the defeat of Turkey in the World War, the people 
of Turkish Armenia set up an independent republic. It 
was their desire to have the United States undertake a 
mandate for Armenia until the country could stand on its 
feet, but this wish was not fulfilled. (For map see Asia.) 

Ar mistice. One minute before eleven o’clock in 
the morning of Nov. 11, 1918, the long battle front 
still shook with the deafening roar of great cannon, 
the hum of countless rifle bullets, and the rattling 
put-put-put of thousands of machine guns. One min¬ 
ute after that hour a stillness almost of death brooded 
over the scene, and here and there could be heard 
the faint happy song of little birds. The armistice 
with Germany, which had been signed early that 
morning, had gone into effect. 


WHEN THE GUNS OF THE WORLD WAR CEASED TO ROAR 














MnannMHi 


These may be said to be the autographs of big guns recording the end of the World War on Nov. 11, 1918. They were “written” on an 
instrument which records the vibrations produced by guns and so enables experts to determine both their location and caliber. The jagged 
lines on the left show the almost incessant firing which continued up to the very minute the armistice took effect. The straight lines on 
the right show how unbroken stillness suddenly followed, except for the two small explosions recorded in the second line. 


in their valleys a great many crops are cultivated. 
There are also some famous gardens, especially near 
Lake Van, the largest body of water in Armenia. 

In modern Armenia there are few railroads and 
you travel mostly on horseback. An armed escort 
is often necessary, especially in those localities in¬ 
habited by the picturesque half-civilized people 
called the Kurds, who often make their living by 
robbing caravans. On the other hand the traveler 
has little to fear from the Armenians themselves, 
though their merchants are shrewd bargainers. It 
has been said that “it takes a Jew to get the better 
of a Turk, a Greek to outwit a Jew, and an Armenian 
to beat a Greek.” The Armenian peasants are often 
fine stalwart-looking people of distinctively oriental 
appearance, but we of America would probably 
think they were dirty and primitive in their habits. 
In the towns such as Erivan and Erzerum, many 

contained in the Easy Reference 


An armistice differs from a truce in that it extends 
to the whole or a considerable part of the armies 
of two or more countries, and precedes or looks 
toward negotiations for peace. Advances, retreats, 
or the redistribution of troops in the fighting line are 
forbidden during an armistice, but supplies and 
reinforcements may be brought up. It was an 
armistice of this sort that was concluded between the 
Central Powers on the one side and Russia on the 
other on Dec. 15, 1917. 

The armistices which were concluded between the 
victorious Allies on the one side and defeated Bul¬ 
garia (Sept. 29), Turkey (Oct. 31), Austria-Hungary 
(Nov. 3), and Germany (Nov. 11, 1918) were of a 
different sort. They contained such severe terms 
that, instead of maintaining the existing military 
situation ( status quo), they were deliberately framed 
so as to make it impossible for the Central Powers 

Fact-Index at the end of t hit work 

213 






























ARMISTICE 


ARMOR 


to resume the war. They amounted, therefore, to 
surrender on the part of Germany and her allies and 
forecast the peace terms to be imposed on the defeated 
states. {See World War of 1914-18.) 

ARMOR. From earliest dawn the camp was alive 
with the neighing of horses and the running to and 
fro of pages and squires; and from the tents came 
sharp exclamations, sounds of hammering, the clank 
of armor being donned, and the rattle of swords and 
shields. For this day, please God, the little army of 
the Black Prince of England should face and conquer 
the vast hosts of the French 
king in the battle of Poitiers. 

In the tent of the com¬ 
mander the last council of 
the captains had been held 
and the Prince himself was 
being arrayed for battle. 
Over his head was drawn 
the shirt of chain-mail, 
reinforced with breastplate 
and backplateand shoulder- 
and arm-guards of bur¬ 
nished steel plates. Next he donned waist-piece and 
loin-guard, and thigh-pieces, knee-guards, greaves, 
and shoes of jointed mail—the whole an ingeniously 
fitted combination of chain-mail and steel plates. 
Then the great visored helmet was placed over his 
head, with a coif of flexible mail to protect the neck; 
and iron gauntlets were drawn upon his hands. 

Piece by piece the jointed plates were adjusted to 
shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, and instep, so as to permit 
of the greatest freedom of motion possible; and all 
was securely made fast with buckles, locks, and 
rivets. Over all was drawn a jupon or sleeveless 
tunic of cloth, emblazoned with the heraldic insignia 
of the Black Prince. Lastly the trusty sword was 
girt about the Prince’s waist, on his left arm he took 
his shield, and he was ready to sally forth. 

The Long Story of Armor 

Such armor as this was the result of centuries of 
progress in warfare. Except in the remotest times 
and places, when hides were used, ancient armor 
was made of metal, usually brass or bronze, though 
not infrequently wood or leather was used for par¬ 
ticular purposes. The earliest armor consisted of 
only a shield, to ward off blows from club, ax, sling- 
stone, javelin, sword, or arrow—such as the shields 
of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, 
Greeks, and Romans. 

As the need for greater protection was felt, the 
helmet, a device which at first resembled our modern 
football player’s head-guard, was adopted. Then 
came the breastplate, and then greaves or sheaths of 
metal or other material for the legs from knee to ankle, 
somewhat like the football player’s shin-guards. 

Eventually the desire arose to protect the whole 
body, and so small bits or plates of metal, or of metal 
rings, were sewn closely together upon a tunic of 
leather or stout cloth, and worn to supplement other 


defenses. Thus we find the Greeks and Romans 
equipped not only with shields, helmets, breastplates, 
and greaves, but also with a short kilt of cloth or 
leather covered with metallic rings or other bits of 
metal. 

A similar garment, which hung from neck to knee 
and eventually acquired sleeves—known as a “coat- 
of-fence” or “hauberk”—was worn by the followers 
of Duke William at the time of the Norman conquest. 
They also wore an iron cap or helmet with a “nasal” 
or nose-piece like our gridiron hero’s nose-guard. 
From that time on knights were rarely found un¬ 
mounted, and the cavalry (which was originally the 
same word as “chivalry”) became the only honorable 
arm of service. Other troops were held almost in 
contempt. 

As time went on the bits of metal were sewn 
closer and closer together, until they overlapped like 
the scales of a fish, so giving rise to “scale armor.” 

Not infrequently, the rings were all interlinked 
or woven together, like the chain-mesh purses that 
women sometimes carry today. This “chain mail” 
was often to be seen at the time of the Crusaders, and 
until the 14th century. 

Bit by bit, meanwhile, the coat of mail was rein¬ 
forced with plates of wrought iron or steel to protect 
special parts of the body—the breast and back, 
the shoulders, arms, legs, and the like. For 200 
years this gradual change went on. By the end of 
the Middle Ages we find in western Europe complete 
suits of plate armor of great beauty and perfection 
of workmanship, such as are shown in the accom¬ 
panying illustrations. 

A Suit that Weighed 70 Pounds! 

A complete suit of this plate armor was worth a 
king’s ransom, and none but princes and great nobles 
could afford them. They were very heavy, weighing 
70 pounds or more, so that the wearer must be lifted 
into the saddle by his squires or men-at-arms. The 
sturdy horses also were elaborately protected by 
similar suits of armor. 

It was armor of this sort that James I of England 
had in mind when he said that he was “in favor of 
warriors wearing armor, for it not only protected 
them from injury but also prevented them from 
injuring others!” 

Such complete equipment of knight and horse 
in plate armor was mainly used in tournaments and 
joustings. Already the English longbow and the 
crossbow, and the spear-like pikes of the Swiss, 
even before the coming of the arquebus and other 
forms of hand firearms, had put the armored knight 
at a disadvantage on the actual field of battle. But 
the breastplate or cuirass, and other forms of half¬ 
armor, continued in use until the beginning of the 
18th century. 

Then the new strategy calling for long marches and 
the extended use of gunpowder in warfare made all 
sorts of armor for a time impracticable. In the 
World War of 1914-18, however, the new conditions 



Visor or helmet worn by 
snipers and machine gunners 
in the World War. 


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214 


pi ace 


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TWENTY CENTURIES OF MEN IN ARMOR 



Full Plate 
Armor 

16* h Century 


English 

Knight 

12th-Century 


Gr'ee k 
Hop I ite 

4th.Century gc. 


Chain 

Mail 

I4th Centu 

V 


The heavy-armed Greek warrior, or “hoplite,” wore a visorless 
helmet, corslet of metal plates, greaves for the legs, and 
carried a round shield. His arms were the sword and spear. 
The Roman legionary had much the same arms and armor, 
except that his shield (“scutum”) was oblong, his two-edged 
sword shorter, and he lacked the greaves. He too usually 
carried a light spear (“pilum”) used chiefly for hurling. 

Duke William’s Nor¬ 
mans who conquered 
England were only a 
little more advanced in 
armor. The “hauberk” 
or “byrnie” might be of 
metal rings sewed on 
leather or cloth, or of 
overlapping scales as 
shown here. Often the 
lower part was like short 
trousers. In the next 
century thehauberkwas 
longer, and of interwov¬ 
en metal rings or small 
overlapping scales, cov¬ 
ering the neck and ter¬ 
minating in a steel cap 
or “basinet.” A heavy 
“pot”-helmet was usu¬ 
ally added when knight 
charged knight on 
horseback with lowered 
lances. 

The two mounted figures show 
the knight with his indispensable 
steed, in later days fully armored 
like his master. Plate defenses 
for the shoulders, upper arms, 
elbows, breast, knees, shins, and 
feet were common by the 14th 
century, when England’s long- 
bowmen defeated the chivalry of 
France at Crecy and Poitiers. 
Such full plate armor as that 
shown for the 16th century was 
used chiefly in tournaments. 


Roman 

Legionary 

|St-Centu ry B.C. 


If the warriors whose bones have so long since gone back to the dust could revisit the earth, clad as they were in life, they would look much 
as you"m hereThis^pkture-story begins with the Greek “hoplite ” who. defeated the Persians, and whose descendants under 
Alexander, overran all Asia. Then follows the Roman,who “shortened his sword in order that he might enlarge his boundaries,”, preferring 
to fivhf at close nuarters Then after a period of a thousand years, we see the Norman man-at-arms, with his “football nose piece”; next 
to fight at close quarters. warrior of the 14th century in half-plate armor, and finally the knight in full plate 

No wonder their squires had to hoist them into the saddle 1 


armor, mounted on his armored steed. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

215 





































ARMOR 


army] 



of trench warfare led to a revival of light steel helmets 
in all the armies. 

The practice of wearing heraldic figures on shield and 
surcoats became necessary as a means of identifying the 
wearer when his face and body were so completely covered 
with armor (see Heraldry). 

ARMOR-PLATE. When steam-power made it pos¬ 
sible to build ships of immense size, the idea of armor 
was revived and applied to the protection of big 
battle craft. The first experimental use was by 
France, in 1855, when three armored “floating bat¬ 
teries” were sent against the Russians with great 
success in the Crimean War. The battle of the 
Monitor and the Merrimac was the first demonstra¬ 
tion of armored ships in actual combat (see Monitor 
and Merrimac). 

At first armor-plate was of wrought iron. As the 
power of guns increased, improved armor was de¬ 
vised, and so the race has continued between the 
resisting power of armor-plate and the armor-piercing 
shot and shell. Today nickel steel with a small 
admixture of chromium is used, and the hydraulically 


forged plates are specially hardened by a process 
which makes the outside intensely hard, while the 
interior is left very tough and non-cracking. Even 
so, in close-up fighting, the high velocity armor¬ 
piercing cannon shot, when a square hit is scored, 
bore through such armor like a bullet through a 
pine board. 

The largest battleships now carry a belt of armor 
steel extending five feet below the water-line. It 
is from 12 to 18 inches thick in the middle of the 
ship, but grows thinner toward bow and stern. Walls 
of steel extend also from' side to side across the body 
of the ship, so that the central section becomes an 
armored box, within which the crew, the machinery, 
and the powder magazines are protected. The 
gun turrets are surrounded with the heaviest plates, 
and thinner sheets are spread over the deck itself. 

Armor-plate of less thickness is used for gun-shields 
and in the turrets of some land fortifications. It is 
also used for armored railway trains in war time, and 
for armored automobiles, such as the “tanks” used 
in the World War. 


How NATIONS ARE ORGANIZED for WAR 


A rmy. If it were pos¬ 
sible to collect in one 
vast field all the millions 
of men in a modern 
army—infantry, cavalry, 
artillery, air service, and 
services of supply—with 
all their weapons from 
the automatic pistols to 
the giant siege howitzers, 
and with all their equip¬ 
ment from the individual 
soldier’s pack to the 
great trains of supply 

trucks and motor cars—that field would still represent 
only a fraction of the strength of a modern nation at war. 

Where armies are counted by the millions, warfare 
becomes the vastest and most complicated of human 
activities. For every man in the actual fighting 
line there must be two or three behind the lines to- 
bring up supplies, keep up communications, and 
perform similar duties—to say nothing of the vast 
army of workers at home in factory, mine, and field. 
Most Important Part of an Army 
Of the combat troops, the infantry (foot soldiers) 
remains—as it has been ever since the knight in armor 
went down before the bows and pikes of the foot- 
soldiers of the 14th century—the most important 
and most numerous arm. As an American general 
puts it, “ the infantry is the army.” It must bear the 
heaviest burdens and losses in the field of battle 
and on the march. Its effectiveness has been enor¬ 
mously increased by the modern automatic rifle and 
machine gun. 


r HE modern army is, in a sense, the entire nation. 

For today it is not alone the actual fighting force that 
enters into the making of war. Modern warfare, with its 
enormous hosts in arms, has become so gigantic a business 
that every person in the land is vitally concerned, and is 
expected to “do his bit” toward achieving victory. The 
farmer, the miner, the mechanic, the clerk, the stenog¬ 
rapher—each must give of his or her best to provide the 
fighting men at the front with the sinews of war, and to 
keep the strength of the nation at its highest possible 
pitch. Here we have a brief sketch of the history and 
development of armies, together with some account of 
their chief divisions and the terrible weapons of destruction 
which an army today employs. 


The cavalry (mounted 
troops) is of less import¬ 
ance under the conditions 
of modern warfare be¬ 
tween highly trained and 
fully equipped armies, 
especially during trench 
warfare and siege war¬ 
fare. In the open 
warfare necessarily pre¬ 
ceding and usually fol¬ 
lowing such operations, 
cavalry is invaluable 
because of its extreme 
mobility, as a screening force, a pursuing force, and 
a scouting force. 

The aviation service, with its captive balloons and 
its airplanes, supplements the cavalry as a scouting 
force. Airplanes—sometimes called “the cavalry of 
the air”—are also an important fighting arm, being 
used for bombing, for offense and defense against 
other planes, and even for attacking troops on the 
ground with machine-gun fire. 

Supporting the infantry and covering its move¬ 
ments, whether advancing or retreating, is the field 
artillery, which must be distinguished from the 
coast artillery of the United States army. The latter 
is used, as its name indicates, only for protection of 
sea-coasts, and it consists of the heaviest possible 
armament, most of it permanently fixed on concrete 
emplacements. There are two divisions of field 
artillery—light and heavy. The light artillery is 
armed with 3-inch guns; the heavy artillery is armed 
with guns above 3-inch caliber including 6-inch guns 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

216 







| Importance of Artillery 


and howitzers. In addition armies sometimes in¬ 
clude horse artillery in which the cannoneers are 
mounted on horseback, and mountain artillery, in 
which light guns are carried on mule or horseback for 
operation in difficult country. In the World War of 
1914-18 the Germans used siege artillery, consisting 
of howitzers and 
mortars of great 
size, to reduce 
fortified towns; 
and also special 
long-distance guns 
—one type shoot¬ 
ing 70 miles. The 
Americans replied 
by mounting 13- 
inch naval guns 
on mobile railway 
carriages. The 
importance of the 
artillery arm has 
been vastly in¬ 
creased with the 
development of 
trench warfare and 
the necessity of de¬ 
stroying dugouts, 

machine-gun “pill-boxes,” and barbed wire 
entanglements before the infantry can 
advance. “The artillery destroys, the in¬ 
fantry occupies,” is a modern maxim which v 
expresses the situation. 

The Artillery and the Tanks 

To supplement the work of the artillery 
and make it possible to deliver surprise 
attacks without the necessity of a heavy preliminary 
bombardment, a new arm came into existence during 
the World War of 1914-18—the Tank Service. This 
service has been called “the charging artillery,” since 
its armored “caterpillar” cars—some of them great 
lumbering affairs and others small rapid-moving 
“whippet” tanks—carrying machine guns and even 
3-inch cannon, can plunge across wire entanglements, 
trenches, and very rough ground, and penetrate far 
into an enemy’s position. 

No less important, and often no less hazardous, 
than the work of these combat troops is that of the 
various auxiliary services. To the Engineer Corps 
falls the duty of laying out and constructing trenches, 
mines, roads, bridges, and railroads in the combat 
area. Much of this work must be done at the front 
under shell fire and the units assigned to such duty 
are usually called “sappers.” The Signal Corps is 
the agency by which a commanding general keeps in 
communication with the units of his army. It builds 
and operates telegraph, telephone, and radio appa¬ 
ratus, and is also in charge of all other signaling 
methods, such as the pigeon service and the motor¬ 
cycle service. 

To keep the fighting troops supplied with all the 


army] 

necessary equipment there must be various services 
of supply. The Quartermaster Corps looks after the 
soldier’s material welfare, providing clothing, shelter, 
food, transportation, and pay. One of its important 
branches is the motor transport corps, which fills the 
roads behind the lines with an inconceivable mass of 

auto trucks carry¬ 
ing ammunition, 
food, and reserves 
to the front and 
bringing back the 
wounded. The 
Ordnance Depart¬ 
ment furnishes the 
soldier with his 
fighting equip¬ 
ment—cannon, 
small arms, ammu¬ 
nition, etc. When 
you remember that 
as much ammuni¬ 
tion is sometimes 
fired in a single 
day of a modern 
battle as in the 
whole Boer War, 
you get some idea 
of the tremendous 
demands on this 
department. An¬ 
other important service of supply is the 
Chemical Warfare Service, which provides 
gas shells and other gas-distributing appli¬ 
ances, and also masks and other defensive 
equipment against the enemy’s poison gases. 
But the modern army is not only engaged in 
inflicting wounds; it must also heal them and restore 
as many of its casualties as possible to the ranks, 
either of fighting men or citizen workers. In addi¬ 
tion it must safeguard the health and morale of its 
troops by preventing and fighting disease. These 
important duties fall to the Medical Department, 
with its various branches such as the Medical Corps 
(surgeons and doctors), the Dental Corps, Veterinary 
Corps, Nurse Corps, and Ambulance Corps. The 
division of physical reconstruction supplements the 
regular hospital work by giving disabled fighters 
such treatment as will enable them to overcome their 
handicaps as fully as possible. 

In addition to these services there are chaplains 
to look after the moral and spiritual welfare of the 
men; musicians, who act as stretcher-bearers at the 
front; and a host of skilled workers, such as 
cooks, blacksmiths, auto-mechanics, saddlers, tailors, 
barbers, etc. 

The commander-in-chief of the United States 
Army is the President. The administration is carried 
on by the War Department under the direction of the 
Secretary of War. The General Staff Corps, under 
the chief of staff, prepares plans for national defense 


THE EQUIPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES SOLDIER 


/£ Shelter Tent and Peg>» 



Cartridge Belt 100 Rounds 

First Aid Packet 


Gun 11 Hiunls 


Weightj/'Entire Equipment 
About ©O Pounds 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact~Index at the end of this work 

217 



















ARMY 


ARM Y-WORM 


and has general supervision of questions affecting the 
efficiency of the army as a whole. The Adjutant 
General’s department keeps all records and has 
charge of official literature, correspondence, etc. The 
Inspector General’s department exercises general 
supervision over such matters as condition of uniforms 
and equipment and expenditure of public money. 
The Judge Advocate’s department is the legal branch 
of the army and supervises 
courts martial, etc. 

Origin of Modern Army 

The modern army, as 
distinguished from the 
levies of feudal times 
based on the principle of 
personal allegiance, and 
from the civic militia of 
the cities of the Middle 
Ages, may be said to date 
from the time of Gustavus 
Adolphus. During the 
Thirty Years’ War (1618- 
48) he originated the mod¬ 
ern army of professional or mercenary soldiers, devel¬ 
oping the idea from the bands of condottieri in Italy 
who used to sell their services to the highest bidder. 
His example was soon followed by Louis XIV of 
France and most of the other crowned heads of Europe. 
This type of army was developed to its highest 
efficiency by Frederick the Great in the following 
century, and with it he started Prussia on that career 
of conquest which ended in her downfall in the 
World War of 1914-18. 

The greatest revolution in the history of modern 
warfare, however, was brought about in 1791, when 
France revived the principle of universal service 
or conscription which had been used by some of the 
ancient nations, notably Sparta and Rome. It was 
the adoption of this principle by Prussia that gave it 
the magnificent military organization which it used 
tyrannically to defeat in succession within the space 
of six years, Denmark, Austria, and France, and 
finally to make its disastrous attempt to seize world 
supremacy. 

Prussia took this momentous step to evade the 
consequences of the rigorous terms imposed on it by 
Napoleon after its defeat at the battle of Jena in 
1806. Forbidden to maintain more than a small 
standing army, Prussia adopted the expedient of 
calling in successive groups its able-bodied young 
men to the colors for a brief period of training, and 
then passing them on to the reserve and filling their 
places with the next class of recruits. The Prussian 
army was thus turned into a vast training school, 
whereby the whole male population was disciplined 
and made ready for war. 

To meet the menace created by this formidable 
fighting machine, one European country after another 
was forced to adopt the same system. At the out¬ 
break of the World War Great Britain and the United 


States were the only powers of importance that 
still depended on the old system of small standing 
armies of professional soldiers, to be supplemented 
by volunteers in case of war; and when they entered 
the conflict, both these nations adopted conscription. 

Switzerland practices a modified form of con¬ 
scription which gives her one of the best citizen 
armies of the world. There is no standing army, 
but all able-bodied males 
are enrolled in the militia 
and compelled to undergo 
training for a few weeks 
each year, until they pass 
into the reserves. 

How Armies are Made Up 
An army, as the accom¬ 
panying table shows, is 
made up of units within 
a unit, so that it can 
readily be separated for 
any purpose into any 
number of parts. Each 
of the three arms of the 
service has a different organization. The table gives 
the infantry organization only, and is designed merely 
to show the thread of army organization. The “other 
troops” in an infantry division besides the two brigades 
include such units as one regiment of engineers, one 
sanitary train, one division headquarters, etc., con¬ 
stituting more than one-third of the total strength 
of a division. 

The number of men in the various units varies with 
different armies. In the United States Army an 
infantry company consists of 256 officers and men, 
a regiment of 3,755, and a division of 27,150. Pla¬ 
toons are subdivided into squads, commanded by 
sergeants and corporals, who receive their appoint¬ 
ments from within the unit to which they are attached 
and are therefore called “non-commissioned” officers 
as distinguished from “commissioned” officers, who 
receive their commissions from the government. 
ARMY-WORM. Did you ever see a whole army of 
worms on the march, sweeping across fields and 
destroying every stalk of grain and blade of grass in 
its devastating advance? 

The so-called “army-worm” is such an insect pest, 
and they are sometimes so numerous that the sound 
of their eating can be distinctly heard. The “worms” 
are the larvae or caterpillars of a moth which is 
closely allied to the one which produces the cutworms. 
The moths are of a dull brown color, with a promi¬ 
nent white spot in the center of each front wing. 
The full-grown larvae are about 1J4 inches in length 
and are striped with black, green, and yellow. This 
pest appears every year east of the Rocky Mountains, 
but is usually checked before it does serious damage. 
The tachina fly destroys incalculable numbers as also 
do fungous diseases. 

When a field is attacked the crop should be burned 
or plowed in. Hordes on the march can be destroyed 


TABLE SHOWING INFANTRY ORGANIZATION 

IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY 

Unit 

Commanded by 

Includes (among 
Other Troops) 

Army. 

. General. 

2 or more army corps 

Army corps 

. Lieut.-Gen. 

2 or more divisions 

Division... 

. Maj.-Gen. 

, 2 brigades 

Brigade.... 

. Brig.-Gen. 

, 2 regiments 

Regiment. . 

. Colonel, assisted by 


Lieut.-Col. 

3 battalions 

Battalion. . 

. Major. 

4 companies 

Company.. 

. Captain. 

, 4 platoons 

Platoon.... 

. 1st and 2d Lieuts... 

4 squads 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


218 


place 


see information 

















by plowing a narrow strip in their path and constantly 
harrowing and rolling it to crush the caterpillars. 

Scientific name of army-worm moth, Heliophila unipunda; 
family, Noctuidae. Certain species of ants and grasshoppers 
also advance in great armies and do untold damage at times; 
and even some butterflies sometimes migrate in such dense 
clouds as to be a decided nuisance. 

AT THE FRONT WITH THE ARMY-WORM 
A NIGHT RAID FROM THE AIR AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NOBODY GOOD 


The parent of the 
arrmj worm is a 
motn- Like other 
moths it flies onlq 
at night - 


INFANTRY ON THE MARCH 

flL 

B SH i 


jTHE ARMY WORMS / 
MESS' JJ 

WHEAT Y 

v)( Young and JuicL)) 
CORN OATS f J 
RYE l/ 

. I ALFALFA I 
^3 MILLET/^, CLOVER! ^ - 

K? 


The worms usuallu 
appear in fields,sud- 


(reat 

the 


denlq and in 
numbers. an 
egg-laqingj moths 
are supposed to be 
carried bq winds. 


OUR REINFORCEMENTS TOTHERESCUE 


* 


TRENCH WAR- 
. FARE ON 
K THE ARMY 
n WORM 




In the pupa stage the 
worm is eaten bq 
birds.chickens , para¬ 
sitic flies, digger 
wasps and beetles. 


*00% 

Whenthe 
Worms have 
finished one 
field theq 
crawl awaq 
in o bodq in 
search of 
other food . 

This man.with the help of 
a mule and a log, is crush¬ 
ing worms, that mave fallen 
nxo the ditch in their march. 

The picture in this group which shows these many-legged infantrymen on the march tells you how 
the army-worm got his name, marching in rank from field to field. Of these worm armies, still more 
than of human armies, Napoleon might have uttered that famous saying, “an army travels on its 
stomach.” hollow the pictures through in order, and you will carry away a pretty complete story of 
one of the many enemies against which the farmer must defend his fields. 

ARNOLD, Benedict (1741-1801). The name of 
Benedict Arnold has become a synonym for treason 
to one’s country. But in the early days of the 
American Revolution there were few generals so 
brilliant and dashing, and few who, in spite of 
a certain recklessness of character and fondness 
for excitement, were so well thought of on the 
patriot side. 


When 15 years old he ran away from home and 
joined the American forces in the French and Indian 
War, but he soon repented and returned home. On 
the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he helped 
Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys to capture 
Fort Ticonderoga. Then he took a gallant part in 
the disastrous siege of Que¬ 
bec, where he was wounded 
and for his bravery was 
made a brigadier-general. 
Later he handled with skill 
a flotilla in battle on Lake 
Champlain. 

Arnold had a violent 
temper and when, in 1777, 
five of his inferiors in rank 
were made major-generals, 
he was very angry. But he 
yielded to Washington’s 
persuasions to keep on fight¬ 
ing in the colonial cause. 
He showed his usual skill 
and bravery in the battle 
of Ridgefield, where his con¬ 
duct gained him the rank 
of major-general, and in the 
battle of Saratoga, where 
his horse was killed under 
him and he himself was 
severely wounded. Disabled 
by his wound, he spent 
much of the winter of 1777— 
78 in a hospital in Albany, 
and the next spring was 
placed in command of 
Philadelphia. 

Here he became involved 
in quarrels with the author¬ 
ities of Pennsylvania, for 
which he was tried by court 
martial. Though acquitted 
of any “intentional wrong¬ 
doing,” he was sentenced 
to receive a reprimand from 
the commander-in-chief. 
Washington performed the 
odious duty as tactfully as 
possible, couching his repri¬ 
mand almost in words of 
praise. 

But the proud spirit of 
Arnold resented the public 
disgrace, and he began at once to lay plans for re¬ 
venge. He was financially ruined, moreover, by his 
extravagance. He asked for and received the com¬ 
mand of West Point, the key of the Hudson River, and 
immediately entered into traitorous communication 
with the British, planning to surrender his post to the 
British commander General Clinton. His treachery 
became known through the capture of Major Andre, 


contained in the Eaty Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

219 








the British spy. But before Arnold could be arrested 
he escaped to the British army, in which he was 
given a command and $30,000. 

During the remaining year of the war Arnold 
served with the British. At one time he led an 
expedition against his native state, Connecticut, 
Wherever he went, whether in the North or later in 
Virginia, his troops burned and plundered and thus 
added to the hatred in which he was now held by his 
countrymen. 

At the close of the war Arnold went to England to 
live. There he met only scorn and contempt from 
those to whom he had betrayed his country. He 
attempted to obtain a commission in the British 
army, but failed because of the feeling against him. 
He then devoted his energies to trade with the West 
Indies. But his business venture was a failure. 
After 20 years of life as a social outcast he died a 
miserable broken-hearted man. His story is indeed 
that of “a soul’s tragedy.” 

ARRAS (a-ras'), France. Like so many of the his¬ 
toric towns of northeastern France, Arras was blown 
to ruins in the World War of 1914-18. For four years 
it was scarcely ever out of range of the roaring guns, 
and of the 5,000 buildings which composed it, only 
870 escaped the shells. The stones of former pic¬ 
turesque Flemish buildings today form the founda¬ 
tions of a rebuilt city. 

Arras is situated at the center of a network of roads 
and railways about 50 miles southeast of Calais. 
It was a position which the Germans were determined 
to capture, and which the Allies were equally deter¬ 
mined to hold. After the first wave of German troops 
had been driven back in 1914, Arras never again fell 
into the hands of the invaders, although their trench 
lines twice ran through the suburbs. 

To get a view of the ground where the British won 
the great battle of Arras in 1917, we must mount to 
the top of the famous Vimy Ridge, just north of the 
city. This ridge, taken and retaken at the cost of 
thousands of lives, was the northern pivot of the 
celebrated “Hindenburg Line,” beyond which the 
Germans swore they would not retreat. 

Looking northeast, almost at the foot of the ridge, 
you see the city of Lens, the great coal center of 
France, whose mines were flooded and wrecked almost 
beyond repair by the foe in the bitterness of defeat. 
Beyond Lens is Loos, the scene of a tragic battle of 
1915, when the British lost 70,000 men. 

On Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, Canadian troops 
launched their attack on Vimy Ridge, supported by 
English divisions on their right. A week later the 
entire ridge had been taken, the Hindenburg Line 
pierced for a depth of six miles, and the battle was 
won. In the German spring drive of 1918, all of this 
ground was retaken, but the defenses of Arras itself 
remained firm, stopping the thrust at Amiens (see 
Amiens). The following September the British de¬ 
livered a second great blow from Arras, which had 
much to do with compelling the German retreat. 


Arras lies on the Scarpe River, a navigable arm of 
the Scheldt River of Belgium. Its position has always 
exposed it to the mischances of war, for it lies in the 
natural path of armies through this part of France. 
It was destroyed by the Vandals in 407, ravaged by 
the Normans in 880, and sacked by Louis XI in 1478, 
after its Flemish inhabitants had rebelled against 
the French king. Nevertheless, medieval Arras 
was a celebrated art center. So great was the fame 
of its tapestry in the 14th and 15th centuries that the 
British gave the name “arras” to all fabrics into 
which figures and scenes were woven. 

In modern times the city has been the center of 
extensive iron, oil, dye, and brewing industries. Its 
religious architecture has never equalled that of the 
neighboring towns, but in the 16th century was built 
its celebrated city hall, with a belfry 240 feet high con¬ 
taining a rare set of bells. Population, about 25,000. 
ARROWROOT. A delicate starch obtained from the 
roots of certain wild plants (Maranta arundinacea) 
found in tropical America. It is easily digested and 
is often used in the preparation of food for children 
and invalids. The name is believed to have come 
from the practice of South American Indians, who 
apply the freshly cut roots to wounds made by 
poisoned arrows. It is manufactured on a large 
scale in Bermuda and Jamaica. 

Ar senic. The word arsenic brings to mind many 
a dark crime, for arsenic compounds are among the 
deadliest of poisons and have been recognized as 
such from ancient times. The element arsenic is a 
steel-gray solid with a metallic luster. It is found 
free in nature, and also in combination with sulphur, 
particularly in ores of the common metals. 

The chief use of metallic arsenic is in making lead 
shot. When pure melted lead is dropped from a 
height it forms tailed drops, but mixed with a small 
amount of arsenic the lead forms nearly spherical 
pellets. Small quantities of arsenic in iron permit 
the iron to take a brilliant polish, and this mixture 
is used for chains and ornaments. 

It is in various chemical compounds, however, that 
arsenic is most valuable. Several pigments contain 
arsenic combined with copper, hydrogen, and oxygen. 
The most familiar of these is paris green, which is 
much used as a spray to kill insects, as well as to give 
vivid green tints in the arts. There is a well-founded 
prejudice against the use of arsenic to color wall¬ 
papers and calicoes, owing to a belief that it gives 
off poisonous fumes. White arsenic, the compound 
with oxygen (AS 4 O 6 ), is much used in glass-making to 
take out the color of iron, in rat and fly poisons, in 
stuffing the skins of birds and animals (taxidermy), 
and in making colored fireworks. White arsenic 
has certain important uses also in medicine. 

Ar temis. The huntress goddess and her radiant 
nymphs, after a long and exciting chase, had stopped to 
bathe their heated limbs in a mossy pool in the wood. 
Hearing the girlish shouts of laughter, a rash mortal 
named Acteon, who also hunted in that forest, drew 


For any eubject not found in its alphabetical place tee information 

220 






Acteon’s Punishment 


near, and as he gazed entranced the virgin goddess 
saw him. A dash of water from her palm into his 
presumptuous face turned him into a trembling stag 
with spreading antlers; and as he bounded forth 

THE GODDESS 


ARTESIAN WELLS 

Artemis is usually represented as a huntress, tall 
and fair, slender and light of foot. Her hair is bound 
in a knot at the back of her head, and her dress is 
girt high for speed. On her shoulder she bears her 

OF THE TIDES 



Artemis, whom the Romans called Diana, being a moon-goddess, was supposed to control the tides. This idea an American artist, John 
Elliott, has expressed in the true Greek spirit by personifying the four great phases of the tides—high, low, spring, and neap—as four horses. 

The goddess still carries her bow, reminding us that she is also a huntress. 


from the thicket he was torn to pieces by his own 
hounds. Never could his tongue now boast that he 
had seen the chaste Artemis disrobed! 

Greek myth tells us that this fair goddess of the 
bow and quiver, whom the Greeks called Artemis 
and the Romans Diana, was the daughter of Zeus 
and the twin sister of Apollo, whom it is said she 
closely resembled. The Greeks worshiped her as the 
goddess of chastity and the guardian of youths and 
maidens. Artemis came also to be looked upon as 


bow and quiver, and by her side is a dog or deer. 
The finest statue of her is that found in a villa of the 
Roman emperor Hadrian, and now in the Louvre. 

At Ephesus, in Asia Minor, a goddess was worshiped 
under the name of Artemis or Diana, but she differed in 
many respects from the true Artemis. This Asiatic goddess 
is noteworthy for her great temple at Ephesus, one of the 
Seven Wonders of the World, and also because of the 
allusion to her in the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. 

ARTESIAN WELLS. Long ago in the French prov¬ 
ince of Artois it happened that a well was sunk so 




A WELL THAT NEEDS NO PUMP 


In an artesian well there must be a porous layer of rock overlaid by one which is not porous and thus prevents the water from escaping 
upward. The porous rock must come to the surface at a place higher than the site of the well. If there is enough rainfall to keep that 
layer well filled with water, the water, being under pressure, will gush out when an opening is made in the layer above. 


ARTESIAN 

WELL 


the moon-goddess, just as Apollo was viewed as the 
sun-god. But most of all the Greeks loved to think 
of her roaming the wilds as the protector of the beasts 
of the field. Her favorite animal was the deer, 
though the bear, the lion, and many other wild beasts 
were sacred to her. 


deep that it passed the watertight strata to layers of 
porous rock and gravel where the water was confined 
under heavy pressure. At once the water gushed 
forth, overflowing the curbing; and the name “arte¬ 
sian well” (from the name of the province) is given to 
such flowing wells to this day. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

221 





















ARTESIAN WELLS 


Arthur] 



As you know, most of the water which falls to the 
earth sinks into the soil or porous rock beneath the 
surface, and flows out again at some point lower 
down, forming an ordinary spring. It is only where 
this water gets caught beneath great layers of 
water- tight earth or stone and remains imprisoned 
there, under the accumulated pressure of the water 
higher up, that artesian wells 
are possible. 

Dry and desert land is 
often turned into rich fields 
through the discovery of 
such underground water- 
pockets. Artesian wells 
were sunk in Egypt and 
China in ancient times. 

One famous well in France 
near Passy yields 5,600,000 
gallons daily, and the water 
spouts 54 feet above the 
ground. The deepest well, 
located near Leipzig, Ger¬ 
many, reaches down more 
than a mile. In the United 
States the cities of St. 

Louis, Columbus, Louis¬ 
ville, Galveston, and Pitts¬ 
burgh receive part or all of 
their water supply from 
artesian wells. The water 
of the deeper wells is often 
warm. Two wells near 
Edgemont, S. D., nearly 
3,000 feet deep, yield 
1,000,000 gallons daily at a 
temperature of 100 degrees. 

Artesian wells are used 
for irrigation chiefly in the 
states of South Dakota, 

New Mexico, Texas, Cali¬ 
fornia, and Montana. Per¬ 
haps the most useful of the 
artesian wells are those in 
the Sahara Desert, where 
all other water supply is lacking. (See Springs.) 
RTHUR, Chester Alan (1830-1886). Chester A. 
Arthur has the curious distinction of proving a 
better president than most people expected him to be. 

He was elected as vice-president on the Republican 
ticket in 1880, and became the 21st president of the 
United States amid the universal gloom caused by 
the death of President Garfield (Sept. 19, 1881). 
He was known as a thorough-going partisan politician, 
and was closely allied to the group of “Stalwart” 
Republicans, under the leadership of Senator Conkling 
of New York, whose bitter opposition to the Presi¬ 
dent had inflamed the mind of his crack-brained 
assassin (see Garfield, James A.). 

But Arthur possessed valuable personal characteris¬ 
tics which aided him in the presidency and agreeably 


disappointed the expectations formed of him. He was 
a polished gentleman, noted for many acts of kindly 
consideration for others. He had received a good 
education, having been graduated from Union Col¬ 
lege (Schenectady, N. Y.) in 1848 with high honors. 
Removing to New York City from his native Ver¬ 
mont, he had become a brilliant lawyer and had won 
fame in two noteworthy 
lawsuits. The first was the 
famous Lemmon case, be¬ 
fore the Civil War, in which 
Arthur won from the court 
the decision that a slave 
who was brought into New 
York State thereby be¬ 
came free. In the other he 
brought suit against the 
street-car company of New 
York City for a negro 
woman who had been put 
off a car because of her 
color; as a result of the suit 
negroes secured the same 
rights on the cars in New 
York State as white people 
enjoyed. 

Arthur in the Civil War 
Though Arthur had de¬ 
fended negroes in these two 
cases, he was not an aboli¬ 
tionist. His only partici¬ 
pation in the Civil War 
was in the positions of 
inspector-general and 
quartermaster-general of 
the New York forces, which 
were political positions; and 
after 1862 he took no part 
at all in that great conflict. 

From the close of the 
war until his death Arthur 
devoted all his attention 
to law and to politics. 
Because of his services to 
the Republican party, President Grant, in 1871, ap¬ 
pointed him to the well-paid office of collector of the 
port of New York. It was his conduct of this posi¬ 
tion which won him the distrust of the people. 
Though he recognized the evils of the public ad¬ 
ministration, he refused to reform his own office, 
claiming that “to the victor belong the spoils.” 
When President Hayes undertook the reform himself, 
and asked Arthur to resign, Arthur refused on the 
plea that he was no worse than other public officials, 
whereupon Hayes removed him. 

People were, on this account, afraid that the spoils 
system would prevail in Arthur’s administration 
when he unexpectedly became President. But Mr. 
Arthur seems to have felt keenly the criticism directed 
against him, and his new responsibilities doubtless 



ADMINISTRATION 

Sept. 19, 1881, to Mar. 4, 1885. 

Emerson and Longfellow died (1882). 
Prohibition of Chinese immigration (1882). 
Civil Service Reform Act and New Tariff passed 

(1883). 

Standard time adopted (1883). 

Alaska Territory organized (1884). 
Three transcontinental railways completed 
(Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific, 
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe). 

Arthur defeated for re-nomination by his Sec¬ 
retary of State, James G. Blaine. 


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222 

















1 21st President of the United States 


sobered and ennobled his purposes. He surprised the 
country by yielding to the demand of the people 
against the politicians, and urged Congress to pass 
a civil service reform bill. This was done in 1883, in 
the Pendleton Act. 

Two other important laws were passed in Presi¬ 
dent Arthur’s administration—the Edmunds Act, 
which forbade polygamy in United States territories, 
aimed at the Mormons; and the Chinese Exclusion 
Act, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese. 
Though there were no dramatic incidents during his 
administration, Arthur’s policy gave general satis¬ 
faction to the country. His failure to secure the 
Republican nomination for reelection, in 1884, was 
due to quarrels within the party. 

The period of President Arthur’s administration 
was one which was marked by growing prosperity in 
the country. The South, slowly recovering from the 


ARTHUR, KING) 

prostrating effects of the war, increased its cotton 
crop from five to eight million bales, and was raising 
grains, fruits, and vegetables as never before. The 
beginning of industrial revolution was also apparent 
which was to make of Alabama, Georgia, and other 
states new manufacturing centers. Expositions held 
at Atlanta in 1881 and New Orleans in 1884 gave 
convincing testimony to this revival of the war- 
devastated states. The West, too, made rapid strides, 
with the completion of three new transcontinental 
railroads—the Southern Pacific in 1881, the Northern 
Pacific in 1883, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe in the same year. Brooklyn bridge, regarded as 
one of the wonders of the world, was opened in 1883, 
and Alaska was organized as a territory in 1884. 

At the close of his term as president, Arthur retired 
to New York City, where he continued to reside 
until his death on Nov. 18, 1886. 


The GLORIOUS FOUNDER of the “TABLE ROUND” 

How an Ancient British Chief Became a Hero of Romance 


ARTHUR, King. No figure in literature more com- 
pletely embodies the ideal virtues of knighthood 
than does this legendary prince of the ancient Britons. 
But of the historical truth of the stories told about 
him we can only say, in the words of one of the old 
writers, that they are “not all a lie nor all true, not 
all fable nor all known—so much have the story-tellers 
told and the fablers fabled, in order to embellish 
their tales, that they have made all seem fable.” 

The real Arthur seems to have lived in the 6th 
century and to have gained fame as a leader of his 
people in the days when the Romans, after ruling 
the island of Britain for three centuries, abandoned 
it to the rising power of the barbarians. Jt is not 
certain whether the enemies against whom Arthur 
fought were the heathen Scots or the heathen Saxon 
invaders. In any case he was finally defeated. 
The conquered Britons, who fled to the mountains 
of Wales and to Brittany in France, began to tell 
wonderful stories of Arthur’s valor and goodness, 
and even fancied that he had not really died but 
would one day come again to give them victory. 

Later, the knights and poets of chivalry, because 
Arthur had been a Christian fighting against heathen, 
fancied him a knight like themselves, and about his 


name there began to cluster a cycle of tales in which 
many other knights appeared. These were said to be 
members of King Arthur’s Order of the Round Table, 
about which all sat as equals under their liege lord. 

In these stories Arthur appears as the son of King 
Uther Pendragon and the husband of Guinevere, the 
fairest princess in the land. He maintains his court 
at Caerleon, in Wales. Percival, Tristram, Gala- 
had, Lancelot, and the enchanter Merlin are among 
the members of his circle. One set of legends tells 
of the search for the Holy Grail, a mystic cup con¬ 
nected with Christ’s crucifixion, which only the pure 
in heart and deed might gaze upon. 

In the end Arthur is killed in battle by his nephew 
Modred, who has revolted against his rule. Arthur’s 
body is mysteriously carried to the island of Avalon 
to be healed of its wounds, whence he is expected to 
return in after ages to restore the rule of right. 

The stories of King Arthur were written down by Geoffrey 
of Monmouth about 1136, and by various .French writers 
of a slightly later date. Sir Thomas Malory, an English¬ 
man who lived about 300 years later, translated the stories 
of the old French writers and published them in one of the 
first English printed books, entitled ‘ Morte d’ Arthur ’ (The 
Death of Arthur). It is from this source that modern 
writers, including Tennyson in his ‘Idylls of the King’, have 
drawn their tales concerning Arthur. 


Ho zv Arthur Won His Crown 


)NG, long ago, according to this story, 
Arthur was the goodliest youth in all 
Britain. Handsome, brave, true-hearted, 
and gentle-mannered, he had grown up 
in the old gray castle of Sir Hector, and he had 
always thought of himself as the son of that good 
knight, and younger brother to Sir Tor and Sir Kay. 

One day they all rode up to London. King Uther 
had long been dead, and the Archbishop had com¬ 
manded the nobles to meet in the great church and 



choose a new ruler. Sir Kay, who had just been 
knighted, forgot his sword and asked Arthur to go 
back for it. The drawbridge was up, and the warden 
was so deaf that Arthur could not make him hear. 

Unable to get into the castle Arthur stopped at 
the churchyard and drew forth a splendid sword that 
he saw fixed upright in an iron anvil in the midst of 
a great stone. When he told Sir Hector where he 
had found the sword, the good old knight knelt and 
kissed Arthur’s hand. 


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ARTHUR, KING 


AS YOU LIKE IT’ 


KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE 


These two pictures are from the decorations by the distinguished American artist, Edwin A. Abbey, on the walls of the Boston Public Library. 
In the lower picture Sir Galahad is about to take his place in “the Seat Perilous” at the great Round Table with King Arthur and his knights. 
He is led by the mysterious figure of his ancestor, Joseph of Arimathea, the first possessor of the Grail. King Arthur rises from his seat 
to receive the virgin knight, the purest of the pure. The upper picture shows Sir Galahad and his fellow knights receiving the benediction 

in the cathedral before starting on the quest for the Holy Grail. 



“Sire,” he said, “it is your own. That was the 
sword of your father, King Uther. No one but his 
true heir could have drawn it from the anvil.” 

Then Arthur learned that when King Uther died 
the wise magician, Merlin, had fetched him, the 
infant prince, to Sir Hector. To hide him from 
enemies who would have killed him, the good knight 
had brought him up as his own son. Merlin had told 
the holy archbishop to so fix the royal sword in the 
anvil that only King Uther’s son could draw it forth. 

At Christmas, Twelfthday, Candlemas, and Easter, 
Arthur was called upon to prove his right to the 
throne. The greatest nobles and knights in the land 
were unable to move the sword when it was replaced 
in the anvil, but when Arthur touched the golden 
jeweled hilt the blade came free. So Arthur was 
crowned King, and as a sign that he dedicated himself 
to God, he laid the royal sword on the altar. 

There are many other stories of this famous 
monarch. They will always be read and told, so 
that the world never can forget how love and 
truth and justice reigned, “when good King Arthur 


ruled the land.” (See Galahad; Round Table.) 
ARYAN ( ar'yan ). The great group of languages 
which includes English as well as most of the lan¬ 
guages of Europe is often called the Aryan or Indo- 
European family. Persian, Armenian, and Sanskrit 
(a language of ancient India) also belong to this 
family. Formerly the term Aryan was applied not only 
to this group of languages but also to the peoples who 
spoke them. Most scholars today prefer to restrict the 
use of Aryan as a race name to the eastern branch of the 
Indo-European peoples, which includes the ancient in¬ 
habitants of Persia and northern India and their modern 
descendants. (See Philology; Races of Mankind.) 
‘As YOU LIKE IT’. In a greenwood forest, accord¬ 
ing to this delightful comedy of Shakespeare, lived a 
banished duke together with many loyal courtiers who 
had followed him into exile. Thither a little later 
came this banished duke’s sweet and lovely daughter 
Rosalind, also banished, and disguised as a page. Her 
lover Orlando, fleeing a cruel brother, came likewise to 
the happy forest of Arden, where there was “No 
enemy but winter and rough weather.” 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


224 


place 


see information 














Unrecognized in her disguise by either her father 
or her lover, Rosalind played many a merry caper with 
both before revealing who she was. Her pretty wit, 
the clownish humor of the faithful fool Touchstone, 
the acid wisdom of the melancholy courtier Jacques, 
and the Duke’s calm philosophy in misfortune, make 
‘As You Like It’ still a favorite play of the stage. 
The Duke, for instance, describes the charm of life 
“under the greenwood tree,” in these famous lines: 
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 

ASBESTOS. This remarkable mineral owes its 
value to the fact that it contains fibers which can be 
separated and woven into a soft white fabric inde¬ 
structible by fire, acid, or time. Several varieties of 
mineral crystals, sold under the name of asbestos, 
produce the perfectly smooth delicate fibers used 
for this purpose. In manufacturing asbestos goods, 
the fibers are separated from the non-crystallized 
rock by a crushing machine and are then combed, 
carded, and spun in much the same way as wool. 
From these threads are woven fireproof curtains 
for theaters, indestructible carpets that grow tougher 
with age, and cloth for upholstering and many 
other purposes. Poorer grades have stiff coarse fibers 
which cannot be woven, but which are worked into 
fireproof paper and materials for insulating hot pipes 
and the wires of electrically heated devices. 

The ancient Greeks knew the peculiar qualities of 
this strange mineral and gave it the name asbestos, 
which means “unburnable.” Charlemagne is said to 
have had a tablecloth of asDestos which was cleansed 
by being thrown into the fire. 


WHERE MOST OF OUR ASBESTOS IS MINED 



This is a section of one of the famous Thetford mines in Quebec, 
known as “Bell’s Pit.” The crane lifts out the ore and, turning, 
deposits it on the car which carries it to the crushing plant. 


The most important of the minerals known as asbestos 
is chrysotile, most of which is mined in the Thetford district 
in the province of Quebec, Canada. Other varieties are 
actinolite and cmthophyllite. The United States, Australia, 
South Africa, Italy, Corsica, and the Tyrol are important 
sources of production. In the United States, Arizona is the 
only state that produces asbestos of quality good enough for 
spinning. Georgia, California, Idaho, and Virginia produce 
low-grade fiber which is used chiefly for electric and heat 
insulation. 


Ash. For the manufacture of carriage shafts, lad¬ 
ders, handles of agricultural tools and other articles in 


ASH TREE LEAVES AND “KEYS” 



This picture shows the chief identifying marks of the beautiful 
ash tree—its tall, limbless trunk, the leaves, and a cluster of the 
winged seeds known as “keys.” The ash tree blooms in clusters 
of reddish flowers in Marcft and April before the leaves develop. 
The “keys” often remain hanging in bunches after the leaves, which 
fall early, are gone. 

which lightness, pliability, and toughness are essential, 
the ash tree has only one important rival in America, 
the hickory. Its tough, hard white wood has been 
found very valuable also for making carriage wheels. 
The lumber from the gnarled specimens is often beau¬ 
tifully grained and is used for cabinet work and veneer. 
The bark is used to some extent in tanning. 

The tree is tall and slender, often reaching a height 
of 120 to 150 feet. The trunk is bare of limbs to a 
considerable height. In the early spring small naked 
flowers appear on the slender branches, the broad 
leaves opening much later than those of other common 
trees. Through the summer the foliage is beautiful, 
but it withers early in autumn. 

There are several species of this tree, thriving in 
many countries. In America the most common is the 
white or American ash, which is found in Canada and 
the United States west to Minnesota and Texas. 
Other species are found in New England, the Middle 
States and in the West. Though a rapid grower and 
beautiful and graceful as a shade tree, the ash is not 
much used for ornamental purposes. This is partly 
on account of the many roots which lie near the 
surface, exhausting the soil and killing the grass and 
shrubbery. The so-called “mountain ash” or rowan 
tree, whose berries of orange red are so conspicuous 
in autumn, is not a true ash. (See Mountain Ash.) 

Scientific name of American ash, Fraxinus americana, 
Flowers, insignificant, appearing before the leaves. Leaf, 
compound, opposite, odd-pinnate. Seeds, winged. Bark, 
brownish-gray tinged with red; young shoots are glossy, 
marked with light colored dots. 


the Easy 


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at the end of this 


work 


contained in 




ASIA 


Largest of the Continents ( 


ASIA, the 

A SIA. Stretching from 
the frozen plains of 
the Arctic Circle to the 
tropical forests of the 
Malay Peninsula, and 
from Europe and Africa 
to within 36 miles of 
North America, Asia in¬ 
cludes nearly one-third 
of the dry land of the 
globe. It is so much the 
largest of the six conti¬ 
nents that you could 
put all North and South 
America upon it and 
have a million square 
miles to spare; or Europe, 

Africa, and Australia, and come only a million square 
miles short. Asia contains the highest lands of the 
world and the lowest, the wettest and the driest, and 
regions where the variations between heat and cold 
are most extreme. It is the cradle of the human 
race, of all religion, wisdom, and civilization. With 
vast resources and more than half the population of 
the whole world, it contains the future of civilization 
as well as its past. 

On the Desolate Roof of the World 

There are people in Asia who will tell you that they 
pasture their flocks on “the roof of the world.” That 
is what they call the Great Pamir region in Turkestan, 
the highest place we know of. Its valleys are 10,000 
to 17,000 feet above sea level, higher than the tallest 
peaks of the Alps or the Rocky Mountains, and its 
mountains rise 10,000 feet higher still. In fact this 
whole region with its area of 30,000 square miles lies 
so far in the cold upper air that although it is as 
southerly as the state of Georgia it has only three 
weeks of real summer. Spring and autumn last two 
months each, and for the rest of the year the lakes are 
frozen as solid as stone. Nothing has time to grow 
except the patches of grass that furnish such fine 
pasture for the sheep of the Kara Kirghiz nomads. 

The Great Pamir is not really the roof of the world, 
but only the ridge of the roof. Just east lies the 
mysterious country of Tibet, the highest inhabited 
place on the globe. Tibet is one-seventh the size of 
the United States and lies at altitudes of from 14,000 
to 17,000 feet. So cold and rare is the atmosphere 
that the people rely more on the long-haired yak as a 
beast of burden than on the less hardy horses. 

The roof has its gables as well. One of these is the 
basin of the Koko-Nor or Blue Lake at the edge of 
Tibet, lying at an altitude of about 9,000 feet; another, 
the Iranian plateau, including Afghanistan, Baluchi¬ 
stan, and Persia; another, Asia Minor; and a fourth the 
Deccan, covering the V of the peninsula of India and 
having an average height of from 1,500 to 2,000 feet. 


I LIZATION 

You might say that 
Asia contained the cel¬ 
lar as well as the roof of 
the world. The Dead 
Sea to the north of the 
Arabian peninsula lies 
1,300 feet below sea 
level and is the deepest 
hollow in the lands of 
the world. The Great 
Pamir itself sheers off 
into the lowlands about 
the Caspian Sea, which 
is 85 feet below sea level. 

However, more than 
one-twelfth of the surface 
of Asia has an elevation 
of over 10,000 feet, so that even with the lowlands its 
mean level is three times as high as that of Europe. 
The four mountain systems that radiate from the 
Sarikol range in the Great Pamir—the Hindu Kush 
to the west, the Himalaya to the southeast, the 
Kuenlun to the east, and the Tien Shan to the north¬ 
east—are the loftiest in the world. Mount Everest 
in the Himalayas, with a height of about 29,000 feet, 
is the highest peak in the world, and has never yet 
been climbed to the top, while three other Himalaya 
peaks look down upon all other mountains. In these 
“abodes of eternal snow” (that is what the name 
Himalaya means) the great rivers of India and China 
take their rise. 

From the Frozen Tundras to the Tropics 

The northernmost point of Asia is Cape Chelyuskin 
in Siberia, lying within 12 degrees (about 800 statute 
miles) of the North Pole. If you should travel from 
there to the southernmost point, which is Cape Ro¬ 
mania at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, within a 
degree and a half of the Equator, you would have 
covered a distance of 5,300 miles as the crow flies. 
Along the northern shores you would see the tundras 
or frozen plains stretching down to the frozen Arctic 
Sea, and except for the lines of driftwood would hardly 
know where land ended and the sea began. The 
plains freeze so deep that even a sun shining day and 
night at midsummer only thaws the ground for a few 
inches—just deep enough to give root to a few berries 
and to the moss that reindeer eat. The people live 
in skin tents, dress in furs, and lead a wandering or 
nomadic life, following their reindeer from one pas¬ 
turage to the next, and hunting and fishing as they 
can. The reindeer furnish them their meat and milk 
and the skins for their tents, and serve to draw their 
sledges as well, in a country where horses could not 
live. In winter the temperature is sometimes as low 
as 92 degrees below zero, but in summer it often 
reaches 100 degrees above, and mosquitoes and midges 
swarm over the warm marshy ground. 


GREAT MOTHER of CIV 

Extent. —North to south, 5,300 miles; east and west, 6,500 miles; 
area, about 17,250,000 square miles. 

Population.—About 900,000,000, more than all the rest of the world 
together; chiefly of the yellow race (Chinese, Japanese, etc.), with 
groups of the white race (Semites in Syria and Arabia, Slavs in 
Siberia, etc.), and negroid groups in southern India and Ceylon. 

Mountains. —Himalayan system, with four highest peaks in the world, 
including Mount Everest, 29,002 feet, and Kanchanjanga, 28,156 
feet. Continuations: Hindu Kush through Afghanistan, Persia, 
to Elburz range south of Caspian Sea, highest peak Mount Dema¬ 
vend, 18,460 feet, to Mount Ararat, 17,000 feet; mountains of 
Armenia, Caucasus, Taurus in Asia Minor; Tien Shan to northeast 
Altai and Sajansk ranges. Ural Mountains between Asia and 
Europe. 

Plateaus and Deserts. —Tibet, highest plateau in the world, mean 
height 15,000 feet; plateau of Iran, including Afghanistan, Balu¬ 
chistan, and Persia; Armenian plateau; plateau of Asia Minor; 
Pamir plateau, valleys 10,000 to 17,000 feet above sea level; 
Deccan plateau in India; Arabian desert; Gobi desert; Takla 
Makan desert; Kirghiz, and Siberian steppes. 

Principal Rivers and Lakes. —In Siberia, Yenisei, Ob, Lena Rivers; 
in China, Amur, Yangtze, Hwang, Tarim; in India, Ganges, Brahma¬ 
putra, Indus; in western Asia, Tigris, Euphrates, Caspian Sea, 
Aral Sea, Lake Balkash, Lake Baikal. 

Chief Countries. —China, Japan, Siam, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkey, 
Siberia. Under foreign rule: India and Burma (Great Britain), 
Korea (Japan), Anam (France). 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

226 








Setting Your Watch Ten Times 


ASIA 


SEVEN STRIKING FACTS ABOUT ASIA 



In Asia is the highest point on the globe. Mount Everest on the On the other hand, the Dead Sea lies in the deepest hollow in the 
borders of Nepal and Tibet rises 29,002 feet above the sea. world, 1,300 feet below sea level, in southern Palestine. 



More than one-half of all the world’s people live in Asia. Here you 
see the Arab, the Turk, the native of India, and the Chinaman. 


No zoo contains such a variety of animals as the jungles of Asia, and 
no botanical garden has such a variety of vegetation. 



Contrast the scene of arid desolation in the Gobi desert with this view 
of the lands of the monsoons in India, the wettest region in the world. 


In the wastes of Asia are 
fast buried by desert sand 


ruins which are being 
is a scene in the desert of Gobi. 



Asia is not only the largest continent, but also the highest. These two pictures illustrate how the piled-up mass of Asia (represented on 
the right) compares with the average altitude of Europe. It is about three times as high. 


To the south you would find a people for whom 
life is as easy as it is hard for the tundra people. The 
tribes of the Malay Peninsula need only to hunt the 
animals or eat the fruits of the tropical forests, grow 
rice in the wet jungles, or by one month’s work pre¬ 
paring sago have their food for the year assured. 

In traveling from the west of Asia to the east you 
would make a longer journey still. It is 6,500 miles 
from Cape Baba on the Mediterranean, the eastern¬ 
most point, to Bering Strait, the westernmost. If 
our own standard time (which changes one hour for 
every 15 degrees) prevailed in Asia, we should have 
to change our watches ten times in making this 
journey, as compared with three changes between 
Boston and San Francisco. 


On the west, Asia touches Europe at the Ural 
Mountains, a range of hills the highest of which is 
not so high as Mount Washington in New Hamp¬ 
shire, and the Caucasus, which forms the parting line 
between the animal and vegetable kingdoms of 
Europe and Asia as well as between the continents 
themselves. It nearly touches again at the two ends 
of the Sea of Marmora, the Bosporus and the Dar¬ 
danelles. Because of this close connection between 
Europe and Asia, geographers sometimes refer to the 
two continents jointly as Eurasia. From Africa, Asia 
is separated only by the Red Sea, ending in the Suez 
Canal to the north, where you could almost step 
from one continent to the other, and in the narrow 
Strait of Bab el Mandeb to the south. 


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ASIA 


Ruins of Dead Cities 


On the east there is one point at which Asia almost 
touches North America, for Bering Strait at its 
narrowest is only 36 miles. 

How the Map of Asia Resembles Europe’s 

Three of the boundaries of Asia are oceans, the 
Arctic, the Pacific, and the Indian. Since the coast 
line is broken by peninsulas and hemmed in by islands, 
these great bodies of water are divided up into a 
series of seas, gulfs, and bays. The most important 
of these, from north to south, are Bering Sea, the 
Sea of Okhotsk, the Japan Sea, the Yellow Sea—so 
called from the yellow mud of the Yangtze River 
that colors it for a hundred miles from the shore—the 
China Sea; and then as you turn the corner going 
west, the Gulf of Siam, the Bay of Bengal, the Ara¬ 
bian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Aden. Of 
these even the comparatively small Persian Gulf is 
more than three times as large as Lake Superior. 

The shape of Asia may remind you a little of 
Europe, magnified of course to many times the size. 
The Arabian peninsula would be Spain, the Indian 
peninsula Italy, though its area is really one-half 
that of all Europe, and the Indo-Chinese peninsula 
would be Greece, with the eastern archipelago taking 
the place of the Aegean Islands. Then you might 
think of the Japanese Empire as balancing the 
British Isles. 

Notice, however, that the eastern coast of Asia has 
not one set of islands but a whole fringe of them. 
This fringe extends from the very north to the south 
so far that you cannot be quite sure at first where the 
islands of Asia end and the islands of Australasia 
begin. Science has, however, drawn a line of demar¬ 
cation—the Wallace line, named after the naturalist 
who first indicated it—at the Strait of Macassar, 
between Borneo and Celebes, where the Australian 
flowers and animals begin to predominate. The 
Philippine Islands are a part of the Asiatic fringe, 
lying east across the China Sea from the Indo- 
Chinese Peninsula. 

So Many Mouths and So Little to Eat 

In Asia you will find more than half of the people of 
the whole world. Two-thirds of them are yellow peo¬ 
ple, almost all the rest white, with a scattering of black 
people in India, and a brown race in the Malay 
Peninsula, which has no well-defined relation to the 
others. 

At first as you look at the map it seems strange that 
Asia should support so large a population. Most of 
the continent consists of places where no one can live 
at all, or where people can only hunt or graze sheep or 
reindeer. Even in China, which contains more people 
than any other country in the world, there are vast 
tracts of waste country. 

Most of Mongolia consists of the Gobi desert. 
This is one of the most desolate regions in the world. 
It is still so little known that story writers feel safe in 
making it the scene of amazing adventures along the 
route of the camel trains that brave the stinging sand 
and dust storms to trade between China and Siberia. 


The sands are now covering the countries round 
about Gobi. In the Lob Nor {nor means ‘Take”) basin 
to the west sand has choked up a whole inland sea 
until it is now merely a series of marshy lakes in which 
the once great river Tarim loses itself. Dunes as 
high as hills are threatening the river, and explorers 
have found in the region known as the Takla Makan 
desert ruins of great old cities buried in the sand. 
This country, merging into the Gobi and called 
Chinese Turkestan, is almost as dreary and barren as 
the desert itself. 

Here and there, however, you will see little oasis 
settlements surrounded by fields of grain and scant 
patches of beans and melons, and shaded by dusty- 
looking walnut and mulberry trees. Here, too, are 
large cities, important trading centers for the mer¬ 
chants from China, India, Bokhara, and Russia. In 
the bazaars of Yarkand, Kashgar, and Khotan you 
will see people exchanging bags of musk for cheap tea 
which is made into bricks that often serve as money, 
or haggling for bright-colored silks and cottons. You 
will see coppersmiths, saddlers, weavers, and cooks all 
busily plying their trades in full view of possible cus¬ 
tomers, while water carriers and jugglers move about 
among a crowd exhibiting all the costumes of Asia. 

Asia’s Creeping Sands 

These Chinese desert lands, including part of fertile 
Manchuria to the north, are only one section of a 
broad belt of desert that extends all the way across 
Asia to the Sahara in Africa. Russian Turkestan— 
beginning at the Pamirs and the Tien Shan moun¬ 
tains—is a desert country like Chinese Turkestan. 
The sands are drying up the Oxus River, or Amu as it 
is called today. Its outlet, the Aral Sea, all that is 
left of a large inland ocean, is disappearing so rapidly 
that geologists making observations every ten years 
can almost see it going. 

In this desert of Russian Turkestan are the shrunk¬ 
en modern remnants of great cities of old time. Merv 
lies in a fertile oasis of nearly 100 square miles, and 
20 or 30 square miles of it are ruins. It was here that 
the traders of China came with silks and spices and 
pearls to meet European traders in the days before 
history, and here that Alexander destroyed one great 
city and built another. Other old oasis cities are 
Tashkend, Samarkand—which was the capital of the 
great Mongol conqueror Tamerlane—Bokhara, and 
Khiva. Afghanistan and Baluchistan are also a part 
of this desert, and a considerable tract of India east 
of the Indus River. 

The central part of Persia is also a desert. You can 
see the sands creeping up and drifting in upon the 
city of Yezd, dooming it as the cities of Chinese 
Turkestan were doomed. The river system, choked 
with sand, is a network of watercourses running no¬ 
where, and no longer makes fertile a land which once 
blossomed like the rose. The westernmost peninsula, 
Arabia, is all desert except the very rim, and with the 
exception of the once fertile Tigris-Euphrates valley, 
it has always been so. Across its burning sands cara- 


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PICTURE-JOURNEY FROM THE HIMALAYAS TO JAVA 


Towers of Victory such as those at the top are frequent sights throughout India. They were erected by Indian potentates to commemorate 
their deeds of prowess. Next we pass to a village of the Himalayas, then get a glimpse of laundry methods in Java, and of one of the 
dense forests of that rich island. Of the two and one-half million population of Canton, China, more than 600,000 are born, live, and die 
in boats like those shown in the next view. We finish our trip by a visit to the famous Bolan Pass, between Baluchistan and India proper— 

one of the two northwestern gateways to India. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

229 























Like Swarms in an Ant Hill 


ASIA 


vans patiently make the 60-day journey from Damas¬ 
cus to Mecca, or traverse the ancient route to Bagdad. 

Nor are the deserts and mountains the only places 
where few people can live. On the rim of the deserts 
are waving plains of grass, which the Russians call 
steppes. The Asiatic steppes, extending from Man¬ 
churia across Mongolia, Turkestan, southern Siberia, 
Asia Minor, Persia, and Arabia, cover an area far 
greater than the whole of Europe. These grasslands, 
too dry for agriculture either because they lie too high 
or because they are too far inland to receive rainfall, 
furnish rich pasture. Scattered nomad tribes wander 
from pasturage to pasturage during the season when 
the grass springs up. When the sun has dried the 
last of it to a reddish brown mass hardly distinguish¬ 
able from the desert itself, the wandering peoples 
return to some oasis to wait for the next growth. 

In Arabia these nomads are called Bedouins. They 
live in prosperity, dependent only on their flocks and 
herds for meat, skins, milk, and wool. They are, how¬ 
ever, very warlike and exact toll from caravans, rail¬ 
road trains, and oasis cities alike. Pitched battles 
between the city people and these plain dwellers are 
not infrequent. 

Russia’s “ Wild West ” 

Similar people are the Kirghiz of Siberia, whom you 
can tell even in a railway station by their long sheep¬ 
skin coats, high red boots, and small caps edged with 
fur. The Siberian steppes have been to Russia in 
Europe what the great West beyond the Mississippi 
was to the United States, with its limitless grasslands 
and limitless opportunities. Another Kirghiz race is 
represented in the people who pasture their flocks on 
the roof of the world. 

There are still other vast regions in Asia that sup¬ 
port few people. The Siberian forest stretches nearly 
across the continent in a belt 5,000 miles east to west, 
and 1,000 to 2,000 miles broad. In some places its 
dark recesses have hardly been penetrated by man. 
It is visited chiefly by the hunter seeking rich skins, 
wolf, bear, fox, sable, and squirrel—for in these cold 
forest depths the animals grow fur of surprising thick¬ 
ness and luster—and by migratory tribes from the 
tundra or frozen plain who come here to fish in the 
dark forest streams. Here and there you will find a 
clearing with a few log huts clustered together, but 
scarcely a town and never a city, for hunters and 
fishermen are not city dwellers nor do their simple life 
and limited wants support more than a trading post. 
In the jungles of the Ganges valley in India, the 
elephants, monkeys, rhinoceroses, tigers, buffaloes, 
wild boars, and wolves are scarcely asked to share 
their territory with human inhabitants. The same 
scarcity of population characterizes the dense tropical 
forests of the Malay Peninsula. 

The Human Swarms of China and India 

What then is the secret of the vast population of 
Asia when so large a part of the land is desert, 
grassland, forests, and mountain peaks? If you should 
visit the great river valleys of China and India you 


would see. China contains half the people of Asia, 
or 25,000,000 more than all Europe. India contains 
almost as many as North America, South America, 
and Africa together. 

The Yangtze in China is the most densely populated 
river valley in the world. The river is navigable for 
2,000 miles or more and all along its banks are little 
farms hardly bigger than a pocket handkerchief. Here 
for thousands of years people have grown crops and 
kept their soil fresh by the use of river mud and other 
fertilizers. People live even on the river itself, in 
little boats called sampans, whose matting roofs are 
the shape of half a barrel. These river dwellers keep 
shop and even grow things on their boats. In the 
valley of the Amur to the north there is a smaller 
population, but people fairly swarm along the fertile 
Hwang River. More than 12 centuries ago China 
constructed what is practically a fourth great river, 
the Grand Canal, 600 miles long. Following this and 
countless smaller canals are more of the tiny close- 
packed farms and flooded rice fields. Where mul¬ 
berry groves are planted for the silkworm, crops are 
grown between the rows of trees, for not an inch of 
soil must be wasted. 

In India, too, there are swarming river valleys, par¬ 
ticularly the Ganges, and the fertile valley between 
the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. The Indus valley 
is less productive owing to the Indian desert just west 
of it, but the fertile soil is now being reclaimed by 
irrigation. In all, India has a population three times 
as great as that of the United States. 

Other Great Rivers of Asia 

The three chief rivers of Siberia, the Ob, the 
Yenisei, and the Lena, of course do not support such 
great populations. They are broad and deep enough 
to be navigable, and the soil is fertile, but they are 
frozen too much of the year. The great rivers of 
western Asia, the Tigris and the Euphrates, water a 
valley which was of the greatest productiveness 5,000 
years ago, but is today little developed. 

Other countries where a great many people live are 
those which are blessed by rain-laden ocean winds 
breaking against mountains. Thus the Empire of 
Japan, which for all its hundreds of islands has an in¬ 
habitable area little larger than California, contains 
more than half as many people as the whole United 
States. Siam, five times the size of the state of 
New York, has about a tenth as many people as all 
the states. 

To make up for its many dry places, Asia contains 
the wettest region in the world. This is Assam, south 
of the eastern Himalayas. It has a recorded rainfall 
of 800 inches as against the less than ten of northern 
Siberia, Arabia, Persia, and the Gobi desert. This 
warm wet climate with enough of a slope to drain the 
water from the roots of the plant is just what is needed 
for tea-growing, and tea is the industry of Assam as 
it is of the warm moist island of Ceylon. 

Asia has been called the cradle of the human race, 
and some scientists have pointed to definite regions 


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BUSINESS LIFE ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 



The yak is one of the handsomest animals in the world—in spite of his looks—if we regard him from the standpoint of the well-known 
proverb “Handsome is as handsome does.” The yak is to the people of Tibet what railroad trains and steamships are to our part of the 
world; he is always carrying freight for somebody. The cows of the yak family furnish milk, and the skin of both cows and bulls is used 
for clothing. You can be sure people have to have good warm clothes up among such vast snow-clad mountain ranges. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

231 























Lands of the Bible 


1 AS! A 

such as the Caucasus or Asia Minor as the first abode 
of civilized man, the place from which he migrated to 
Europe and southern Asia carrying his primitive cul¬ 
ture with him. 

However this may be, Asia can show remains of the 
oldest known civilization in the world except Egypt. 
At Troy in Asia Minor, the peninsula lying between 
the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the heroes of 
Homer were fighting 3,000 years or more ago, and 
archeologists have found on the same site cities still 
older than the one they fought for. In Caucasia, the 
broad isthmus between the Black Sea and the Cas¬ 
pian, lay Colchis, the rich and fertile land whither 
Greek legend says that Jason went in search of the 
Golden Fleece. Scientists tell us that here the stone- 
fruit trees such as the peach, the apricot, and cherry 
first developed from the same wild ancestor. Here, 
too, are the ruins of the great old cities of Armenia, 
and here rises the snowcapped peak of Mount Ararat, 
nearly 17,000 feet high, where the Bible tells us 
Noah’s ark struck land. 

Palestine along the Mediterranean coast of the 
Arabian peninsula is the scene of Bible story and of 
the development of the ancient Hebrew civilization. 
Persia as a political power dates back to 559 b.c. when 
Cyrus made his sweeping conquest. And oldest of all 
civilizations in the world except Egypt is that of 
Mesopotamia in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, where 
there were great cities as early as 3,000 b.c., followed 
by the empires of Babylonia and Assyria. 

In the two other fertile flood plains besides Mesopo¬ 
tamia—where people could cultivate the arts of peace 
protected by ocean, desert, and mountain barriers— 
there were early civilizations, though as yet the his¬ 
torians have not been able to prove quite how old. In 
China there are definite records as far back as 1100 b.c. 
In India the princes rode on elephants and lived in 
splendid palaces at the time of Alexander’s campaign 
to the Indus in the 4th century b.c. 

For thousands of years, however, the civilization of 
Asia stood still. The Indians of Alexander’s time 
were skilled in all the arts they ever possessed down 
to the time of the British occupation. The Chinese 
preceded Europe in the invention of printing, paper 
making, porcelain, guns, gunpowder, fine weaving, 
and perhaps the compass. But having found a good 
way of writing, governing, making cloth, and tilling 
the soil 3,000 years ago, they simply stopped hunting 
for new ways. 

The Arabs sweeping over the feeble remnants of 
Greek and Roman civilization in the early Christian 
centuries absorbed and developed the learning they 
fell heir to. Throughout the Middle Ages they led 
the world in agriculture, building, weaving, metal 
working, and mathematical science. But their cul¬ 
ture has remained at the same stage ever since, while 
the West has been forging ahead. 

Today most of Asia is politically in the hands of 
Europe. Russia has put her stamp on the new coun¬ 
try of Siberia and the old countries of Central Asia and 


Transcaucasia, more than one-third of the area of the 
continent. England has occupied India and scattered 
points such as Aden, in Arabia, so that at the begin¬ 
ning of the World War she already controlled one- 
ninth. In Arabia and Persia, too, European forces 
are at work, and the new governments of these lands 
now freed from Turkish rule will no doubt progress 
under European guidance. China is riddled with 
foreign influences. Japan, the one Asiatic nation 
which has remained absolutely independent, has done 
so at the price of accepting western methods in all the 
arts of war and of peace. 

Where All the Great Religions Were Born 

Asia has been the cradle not only of civilization 
itself, but of all the great religions. Out of Meso¬ 
potamia came the germs that developed into the three 
systems that now hold the whole western world. The 
first was Hebraism, which developed very early in 
Palestine. From Hebraism sprang the other two, 
first Christianity, and in 622 a.d. Mohammedanism. 
The latter from small beginnings at Mecca and 
Medina in the Arabian desert became the most war¬ 
like proselytizing religion of the world. In the Middle 
Ages it extended even to Spain. Today it numbers 
175,000,000 in Asia and Africa alone. 

From the Aryan group in Asia as well as from the 
Semitic have come great religions. The Persians 
developed Zoroastrianism, based upon the principle of 
the conflict between good and evil; and the Hindus 
originated Brahmanism and its outgrowth, Bud¬ 
dhism, which between them now number perhaps 
350,000,000 followers in Asia. From the yellow man, 
too, has sprung a great system, that which Confucius 
originated in the 5th century b.c. and which has been 
the religion of most of the Chinese ever since. 

As a result, Asia contains places of pilgrimage for 
the whole world. Palestine has been sought by 
Christians since long before those medieval military 
pilgrimages, the Crusades. Every year hundreds of 
thousands of Mohammedans go to Mecca and 
Medina in the Arabian desert. It is part of the duty 
of every Mohammedan to go once in his lifetime to 
these places so intimately connected with the prophet 
of his religion. For Buddhists Tibet is a holy land, 
and “Dragon Lake,” high in the Great Pamir, is sup¬ 
posed to be the holy of holies. For the Chinese, the 
tomb of Confucius is a place of pilgrimage. 

How Long Have We Known Asia? 

The name Asia is believed to come from a Hebrew 
root which means, like the Latin root of the word 
orient, “ the east” or “the rising sun.” And Asia con¬ 
tains the whole so-called Orient, near East and far East 
alike. For thousands and thousands of years the riches 
of Asia have poured into Europe—spices, incense, ru¬ 
bies, pearls, silks of wonderful colors, and muslins as fine 
as gossamer. Until 500 years ago these precious things 
from China, India, and southern Arabia came by way 
of the long patient camel trains that spent months, 
sometimes years, making their way through the deserts 
of Turkestan, Persia, and Arabia, to Asia Minor. 


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) Traffic of West with East 


After Vasco da Gama discovered the ocean route 
around Africa to India in 1497-98, part of the traffic 
was carried by sailing vessels. Within 50 years the 
Portuguese navigators had pushed still farther, to 
China and Japan, and had established a line of trading 
posts which amounted to a coastal empire. In the 
first years of the 17th century Holland, England, and 


ASIA 1 

Despite this long familiarity with the products of 
Asia, and this history of active commercial relations, 
the country and the people have remained unknown 
to us almost down to our own day. Missionaries 
going to India and China found people who had been 
doing things the same way for so many thousands of 
years that it was almost impossible to teach them any 


A CARAVAN IN THE DESERT 

■ 



In the desert regions of Asia, as in those of Africa, the camels are still and long will be the chief means of moving passengers and freight. 
Here we see a caravan lumbering along what is evidently a pretty well traveled road. Under ordinary circumstances 25 miles a day is a 
good average pace for a caravan. Notice the sparse desert vegetation in the foreground. 


France had also their commercial companies in the 
far East. Just before the middle of the 18th century 
there began a 40 years’ duel between England and 
France for the supremacy of southern Asia, England 
at length coming out victorious. In the meantime 
Russia had started across Siberia in 1580, and within 
80 years had obtained this largest slice of Asia to 
the Pacific Ocean and the Amur River, unopposed 
by the rest of Europe and weakly questioned by 
the Turk. 

In the 18th and 19th centuries American clipper 
ships from Salem, Boston, and Providence did a flour¬ 
ishing trade in tea, coffee, ivory, spices, and fine 
fabrics, and it was an American, Commodore Perry, 
who opened the doors of Japan in 1854, after they had 
been closed to the western world for a century and a 
half. A war between China and Japan in 1894-95 
resulted in the cession of Formosa, or Taiwan as the 
Japanese call it, and Pescadores to Japan, and the 
Russo-Japanese War in the cession of the southern 
half of the island of Sakhalin to Japan in 1905, 
while Korea was annexed to the island empire in 
1910. The Philippines were transferred to the 
United States at the close of the Spanish-American 
War in 1898. 

In the last decade of the 19th century various 
attempts were made to shorten the distance between 
Europe and Asia. The Suez Canal was dug, connect¬ 
ing the Mediterranean with the Red Sea so that 
ships could go through to the Indian Ocean without 
rounding Africa. Russia built railroads across Siberia 
and Central Asia, and Germany was busy with a 
project more momentous still, a railway from Ham¬ 
burg to Bagdad—and perhaps beyond. 

contained in the Easy Referen 


other way. Nor could the bustling West understand 
the viewpoint of people whose minds seemed to work 
in set grooves. 

What of Asia’s Future? 

But the enterprise of the modern world could not 
allow one-third of the land of the globe to remain 
closed to it indefinitely. The wealth of Asia in terms 
of natural resources and cheap labor—the average 
income in India is only $20 a year, and for China it 
may be even less—tempted the modern world to con¬ 
quest just as the gold and jewels tempted Alexander. 
England and Russia each had an excellent foothold, 
France and Holland smaller, but equally definite and 
profitable holdings, and Germany arriving late on the 
scene sought to supplement her strategic foothold in 
Shantung by means of the Bagdad railway and her 
influence through Turkey upon Asia Minor. The 
rivalries, at bottom commercial, for the unexploited 
Asiatic lands made them stakes for which a dangerous 
diplomatic game was constantly played. 

What the map of Asia will be after things have 
shaken down hardly anyone dares to speculate. Peo¬ 
ple used to wonder whether the future of Asia was to 
be yellow or white. But the experience of Japan in 
attempting to dominate China would seem to show 
that the oriental nations get on better with the occi¬ 
dentals than with each other, and that any widespread 
union among the Asiatics themselves is unlikely. 
The questions that now arise are smaller ones. With 
Russia out of it what will England’s policy be in 
India and on the Indian border? What is to become 
of separate parts of the Russian empire in Asia? 
What is to become of China? An independent king¬ 
dom of the Hejaz has been formed in Arabia. Will 

act-index at the end of this work 









ASIA 



Persia really be free at last? And are the troubles of 
Armenia at an end? For 20 years Asia had been 
shaking off its apathy and the World War has hastened 
the day of its awakening. Its future is one great 
question mark. (See also articles on the separate 
countries, cities, and chief physical features.) 

Asia minor. The name Asia Minor has been 
applied since the 5th century b.c. to that great 
peninsula which juts westward from the continent of 
Asia, separating the Black Sea from the Mediterranean 
and facing Europe across the Dardanelles, the Sea of 
Marmora, and the Bosporus. On the east it is 
bordered by Mesopotamia and Armenia. In modern 
times the name Anatolia, meaning “the East,” has 
been given to this great region. Its area is about 
twice that of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl¬ 
vania put together. 

Asia Minor consists mostly of a high and barren 
central plateau, fringed on all sides by rugged moun¬ 
tains, including the great Taurus range to the south. 
Only on the slopes between the mountains and the 
sea do forests and green fields now thrive, 
though in ancient days, before it was stripped 
of its trees, it was fertile and well watered. 

This country has been the battle ground 
of warring nations since the days of ancient 
Troy, which stood near its extreme western 
tip. It was the home of the Hittites of the 
kingdoms of Phrygia and Lydia, and of im¬ 
portant Greek colonies along the coast. It 
saw the victorious armies of Croesus and of 
the Persian kings, the famous “March of 
the Ten Thousand” described by Xenophon, 
and the conquests of Alexander the Great 
and of Rome. Finally, beginning in the 11th 
century, it passed gradually into the hands of 
the Turks, who, after staggering beneath the 
blows of the wild Tamerlane, established the 
rule which continues to this day. 

Asia Minor possesses tremendous unde¬ 
veloped mineral wealth, extensive forests, 
and many fertile valleys. But its greatest 
political importance arises from the fact 
that it is the natural highway between 
Europe and southwestern Asia. As such, it 
was one of the underlying causes of the 
World War of 1914-18, for German influence 
had become so strong in Turkey that the 
German Empire had obtained almost com¬ 
plete control of Asia Minor as a military and 
trade route, centering about the famous 
Bagdad railway. 

ASPARAGUS. When allowed to mature, the tall 
plumelike branches of the cultivated asparagus are 
as beautiful as a delicate fern, with the added splendor 
of numerous red berries which glisten amid the 
feathery foliage. And what table vegetable is more 
toothsome and healthful than these same luscious 
shoots, if cut when they first poke their purplish- 
white caps through the rich bed in which they grow? 


asphalt] 

Yet the wild asparagus, as it grows on the southern 
coast of England, is an insignificant plant, with 
branches only a foot high and stems no thicker than a 
goose quill. On the plains of Russia the wild varieties 
are so plentiful that cattle eat them like grass. 

For 2,000 years asparagus has been cultivated for 
the table; for it was a favorite vegetable with the 
ancient Romans. It is a perennial plant and early 
in the spring sends up its thick tender stalks, which 
are ready for cooking when six or eight inches high. 
The plants are grown in rows set two and one-half 
to five feet apart, and with one to two-foot intervals 
in the rows. Beds once established bear for years, 
but require heavy manuring. Usually the rows are 
banked with earth to “ blanch” or whiten the stalks. 
Asparagus is canned in large quantities, especially 
in California. 

There are 150 species of asparagus widely distributed in 
tropical and temperate countries. Many species are culti¬ 
vated only for ornamental purposes, some reaching a height 
of 15 feet. The common smilax is a close relative. Scien¬ 
tific name of common garden variety, Asparagus officinalis. 

OVERLOOKING THE PITCH LAKE 


ASPHALT. “What other mineral can you name,” 
asks a scientific writer, “which, when a wagon-load 
is taken away, accommodatingly fills up the hole by 
itself, so that there is just as much of it as before?” 

This is the situation with reference to the famous 
asphalt deposits in the British island of Trinidad, 
just off the mouth of the Orinoco River in South 
America. These are chiefly in the form of a lake of 



Here we see a picture of part of the great pitch lake of Trinidad, with the 
little railroad that carries the black freight to the shipping point. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

234 








How Asphalt is Used 






m 






ASS 


GATHERING THE INEXHAUSTIBLE HARVEST OF PITCH 



Here is a closer view of the black lake with the black workmen digging out the asphalt in blocks. No matter how much is taken out during 

the day the holes dug are filled up by the next morning. 


asphalt about one mile in diameter, occupying the 
crater of what seems to be an extinct mud volcano. 
The supply partly renews itself by a constant flow 
of soft pitch from subterranean sources. Nature 
seems also to say, “Let’s make it handy”; for this 
asphalt lies near the sea, is right on the surface so 
that no mining is required, and is so pure that it 
requires almost no refining. The deposit is owned 
by the British government, but is leased to an Amer- 
ican company. 

More than 85 per 
cent of the asphalt 
used in the United 
States has come 
from this lake. 

In the nearby 
state of Bermudez, 

Venezuela, is an¬ 
other asphalt lake, 
covering 1,000 
acres, and Cuba 
also yields a con¬ 
siderable supply. 

In California beds 
of very pure high- 
grade liquid as¬ 
phalt are found, 
which even in its 
natural state has 
the proper con¬ 
sistency for paving. Other producing states are 
Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Utah. 
Deposits also occur in Canada and several countries of 
Europe. Recently the manufacture of asphalt from 
petroleum has also become an important industry. 

Raw asphalt is manufactured into a cement by melting 
and mixing it with other forms of bitumen. Clean sharp 


sand heated to 300 degrees is added, and lastly carbonate 
of lime. The three substances are mixed thoroughly and 
the product is the mixture used for paving streets. Asphalt 
is employed also for making black Japan varnish, roofing 
felts and waterproofed paper, and for waterproofing founda¬ 
tions or bridges and buildings. 

Asphalt is a solid or semi-solid form of bitumen, black or 
brown in color, brittle in consistency (though this varies 
from a bright pitchy condition to thick masses of mineral 
tar), and compact. It melts easily at about the boiling 
point of water, and emits a thick smoke of pitchy odor. 

Nearly all geolo¬ 
gists agree that as¬ 
phalt is derived from 
fatty and oily ac¬ 
cumulations from 
both animals and 
plants at high tem¬ 
peratures and pres¬ 
sures. 

Ass. The patient 
ass is a far older 
friend of man than 
the horse, for it was 
captured in the 
deserts of Egypt 
and western Asia 
and domesticated 
long before the 
horse had been 
first subdued in 
his northern 
grasslands. 

Wild asses still flourish in the Nubian deserts and 
the arid interior of Asia, where we find the nimble 
kiang and onager of Eastern Mongolia and Tibet. 
Travelers tell us that those who have seen the donkey 
only in its civilized state have no conception of its 
wild ancestor. For the latter is one of the fleetest 
of animals, the perfection of activity and courage, 


THE WILD ASS OF THE BIBLE 



Here is a picture of the wild asses of Asia, so often referred to in Scripture; for example, 
Num. xxii, 28; 2 Pet. ii, 16, and Job xxxix, 5. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

235 














ASS 


ASTER 



and high-bred in every act and step. The domestic 
ass or donkey is descended from the African ass of 
Abyssinia. It is smaller in size than the horse and 
has long hair only at the end of its tail. Its color is 
usually gray. 

The reputation of the ass for stupidity is very old. 
Even the Egyptians represented an ignorant person 
by the head and ears of an ass. In the Middle Ages 
the Germans represented Thomas, the unbelieving 
apostle, by the ass, and the boy who was last to enter 
the school on St. Thomas’ Day was called the “Ass 
Thomas.” In northern France the “Feast of the 
Ass” commemorated the Flight of Mary and the 
infant Jesus into Egypt; Balaam’s ass also appeared 
and uttered prophecies. Because of abuses this 
festival of the church was suppressed in the 15th 
century. 

In southern Europe the ass has been carefully bred and 
thus greatly improved. In Kentucky and Missouri, where 
they are used in breeding mules, as a result of good care 
they are above the average in size. In the north of India, 
where they are used by the lower castes, they are little taller 
than a Newfoundland dog. 

In Syria and Egypt the ass is seen at its best, and is 
highly prized as a domestic animal. Its milk is used for 
food and is especially good for invalids. The leather called 
shagreen is tanned from the skin of the ass. 

ASSAS'SINS. Near the end of the 11th century a 
Mohammedan named Hassan ben Sabah established 
himself in a mountain fortress of Persia. This became 
the headquarters of a secret Mohammedan sect, 
which for two centuries spread the terror of its name 
from India to Egypt. Instead of fighting his enemies 
in battle, Hassan resorted to secret murders, planned 
and carried out with great skill by his numerous 
followers. 

The “Old Man of the Mountain,” as Hassan was 
called, demanded blind obedience from his followers. 
This he obtained in a strange way. He maintained 
beautiful and luxurious gardens, carefully guarded, 
into which he introduced his disciples, after giving 
them a heavy dose of a dream-producing drug called 
hashish , made of Indian hemp. The next day, the 
young men were told that the magnificent visions 
which they could faintly remember were a foretaste 
of the heaven which awaited them if they obeyed 
their leader. They were then sent forth on their 
murderous missions. This use of hashish won for 
the members of the sect the name of Hashishins or 
“Assassins,” a name which came to be applied to all 
political murderers. 

The title of the Old Man of the Mountain passed down 
through a long succession of chieftains. The Assassins were 
compelled to move their principal stronghold from Persia to 
Syria. It was here that they clashed with the Crusaders, 
making their sinister power felt by the secret slaying of 
several of the European leaders. But men trained in murder 
cannot live in peace among themselves, and it was not long 
before the Assassin leaders began practicing their art on 
each other. Their power waned, and in 1255 the Tatar 
prince Hulaku massacred 12,000 of the hashish eaters and 
put an end to their rule. Small tribes still linger in the 
Syrian mountains, who claim the questionable honor of 
descent from the Old Man of the Mountain. 


ASSAYING. To find out how much of a given total 
there is in a metallic ore or alloy—such as the amount 
of iron in a specimen of iron ore or the amount of 
silver in a silver dollar—we go to the assayer. Assay 
processes vary with different metals, but the method 
used with silver ore will serve as an illustration. 

The first process is called scorification. One part, 
by weight, of ore is mixed with from 10 to 20 times 
its weight of granulated lead and half its weight 
of borax. This mixture is put in a crucible or in a 
fire-clay dish, called the “scorifier.” It is then 
heated to redness in a furnace having a compartment 
or muffle open to the air, until the substances are 
thoroughly melted. The surface of the molten lead 
now shows in a circular space in the center of the 
scorifier, while the earthy materials are seen as a“slag” 
which forms a ring around this circle. The heating 
is continued until a considerable part of the lead has 
been oxidized to lead oxide. This goes into the slag 
and increases its amount, so that the slag finally 
covers the diminishing metallic lead. Then the 
melted mixture is poured into a mold, and, on cooling, 
a lead button is seen which can be detached from the 
slag. The lead has taken up the silver as well as any 
gold that may be present. 

The next process is called cupellation. The “cupel” 
is a small porous cup made of burnt bone. The lead 
button is put in this vessel, after the latter has been 
heated to redness in a muffle furnace. The lead and 
other base metals that may be present are burned or 
oxidized, and the oxides are absorbed by the porous 
mass of the cupel, or sent off in the shape of vapor. 
Silver and gold are not oxidized, hence they remain 
in the metallic state. Just before the assay is 
finished, rainbow colors come and go over the button, 
and a brilliant flashing up of color marks the end 
of the operation. The silver button left in the cupel 
is finally weighed and the yield of the ore is computed. 
Assyr ia. The second of the three great Semitic 
empires that grew up in the Tigris-Euphrates valley 
in ancient times is that of the Assyrians, who dwelt 
about Nineveh in the upper part of the Tigris valley. 
The Assyrians were closely related to the Babylonians 
in race, language, and culture, and the history of 
Assyria is closely intertwined with that of Babylonia. 
(See Babylonia and Assyria.) 

ASTER. Toward the last of August and throughout 
September and October, these beautiful starry wild 
flowers clothe the land in royal bloom and add much 
to the charm of the American autumn. The aster 
(from the Greek aster, meaning “star”) was so 
named because of its radiating or starlike flower head, 
which varies from a half-inch to nearly two inches in 
diameter. It belongs to the family of plants having 
composite blossoms—such as the marigold, daisy, 
dandelion, and others—and is found largely in North 
America, though some species grow in almost every 
region of the globe. In the United States over 
250 species of wild asters bloom with such pro¬ 
fusion that the aster has fittingly been suggested as 


For any subject 


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236 






ASTEROIDS 


ASTRAKHAN 



the national flower. Big and little, short and tall, 
ragged and tidy, they spangle every roadside, fence- 
row, meadow, and hillside— 

And everywhere the purple asters nod 
And bend and wave and flit. 



The purple or blue asters are very numerous, 
ranging from the low-growing seaside plant to the 

tall New England 
variety which reaches 
sometimes 
eight feet in 
height. One of 
their prettiest 
species is the 
late purple 
aster, with its pur¬ 
plish-blue daisy-like 
flower heads, paler in 
hue than those of its 
New England rela¬ 
tive. It grows in dry exposed 
places. 

The allied golden asters seek 
the dry roadside, while the 
white species appear in open 
wood or field. One variety 
grows at a considerable height 
on the mountains of Europe. 
In England the aster is called 
the Michaelmas and Christ¬ 
mas daisy, because when the weather is mild it 
blooms until Christmas day. 

The cultivated aster in our gardens is usually 
called the China aster because it is a native of that 
country. It yields a great variety of blossoms 
almost twice the size of the largest wild aster. Its 
colors range from white and blush through rose and 
crimson; and from lilac through blue to purple. 


Family name of the aster, Asteraceae. The New Eng¬ 
land aster (Aster novaeangliae) has flowers 1 to 2 inches 
across, which grow in branching clusters. They have from 
30 to 40 violet or purple ray florets surrounding numerous 
5-lobed, tubular yellow disk florets, set in a sticky green 
cup. The stem is 2 to 8 feet high, rough, stout, and leafy. 
The leaves, growing directly from the stem, are long, lobed 
at the base, and pointed at the tip. 

Asteroids. The baby planets of the solar system, 
most of which occur in the so-called “gap” between 
Mars and Jupiter, are called “asteroids” or “plane¬ 
toids.” More than 800 of these have been discovered 
and photographed, and it is quite probable that the 
number ultimately found will run into thousands. 
There may be countless others so small as to remain 
forever invisible. Even the largest can rarely be 
seen with the unaided eye. 

The existence of such planet-like bodies was 
unknown until Piazzi, an Italian astronomer, dis¬ 
covered Ceres, the largest of them, with a diameter 
of 485 miles, on New Year’s Day, 1801. The next 
largest are Pallas (304 miles in diameter), Vesta 
(248 miles), and Juno (118 miles). The faintest so 
far found probably do not exceed five miles in diameter. 


If the entire solar system were arranged symmet¬ 
rically according to what is called Bode’s law, the 
region where these bodies are found would be occupied 
by a large planet. A theory has therefore been put 
forward that these asteroids are fragments of such a 
planet which was broken up by a celestial catastrophe. 
But modern astronomy rejects this explanation, and 
regards the asteroids as the fragmentary materials or 
“planetesimals” out of which a large planet would 
have been built up if there had been any predominat¬ 
ing nucleus or center of attraction within the zone 
(see Nebulae). 

The asteroids move in orbits around the sun just 
as the earth and other planets do. Their periods or 
length of revolution are from three to ten years. 
Their orbits are generally very elliptical, one end of 
the orbit being much closer to the sun than the other. 
At least one of the asteroids, Eros, has an orbit of such 
size and shape that when the little planet is near the 
sun, it comes inside the orbit of Mars. It is especially 
interesting to astronomers because of all the heavenly 
bodies, except the moon, it comes closest to the earth. 
Once in 27 years it approaches within 13,000,000 
miles of us, which is really “just across the street” in 
comparison with the size of the universe. Observa¬ 
tions of the parallax of Eros give the best method of 
determining the extent of the solar system, and there¬ 
fore its discovery is ranked among those of special 
importance. It was found by the astronomer Witt 
of Berlin in 1898. (See also Astronomy; Planets; Sun 

and Solar System.) 

Astrakhan (as-tra-kan'). You have often seen 
the beautiful curly glossy-black fur called “ astrakhan.” 
Did you ever stop to think where it comes from and 
how it gets its name? 

Astrakhan fur is the skin of new-born Persian 
lambs, and it gets its name from the city of Astrakhan, 
the most important commercial center on the Caspian 
Sea. The city, which is about the size of New Haven, 
Conn., is a picturesque but filthy semi-oriental town, 
built on an island in the Volga River, 60 miles from 
where it empties into the Caspian Sea. For centuries 
it has been one of the chief meeting places of Europe 
and Asia. Through it pass every year many millions 
of dollars’ worth of gold, silks, embroideries, spices, 
drugs, and grain, which the nations of Central Asia 
exchange at Astrakhan for cotton, leather, dry goods, 
salt, sugar, and other products. Among its most 
important exports also are petroleum from the great 
nearby wells of Baku, and fish from the Volga. 

The government of Astrakhan, of which this city is the 
capital, was the fourth political division of Russia in point 
of size. After the World War of 1914-18 it became a part 
of one of the many fragmentary republics erected on the 
ruins of Russia. The district occupies an area of about 
91,000 miles on both sides of the Volga and on the shores of 
the Caspian. Except along the river the region is a vast 
arid steppe. Fishing, cattle-raising, and salt-making are 
almost the only industries of its varied population—com¬ 
posed of Russians, Tatars, Kalmucks, Armenians, Poles, 
Georgians, and Bokharese. 


contained in the E a sy 


Reference Fact-Index at 

237 


the end of this work 








LIKE A MOUNTAIN TUMBLING THROUGH THE SKY 



You probably thmk of all the planets as nearly round in shape, but now astronomers tell us that the small planet or asteroid called Eros 
is a rough irregular mass like a huge mountain. Some believe that others of these tiny worlds are also irregular in shatie because thev 
haven’t sufficient mass to give the gravity—the pull toward the center—necessary to draw them into roundness. Notice the exceotional 
orbit of Eros, pictured in the corner, which lies partly within the orbit of Mars, as explained on p 237 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


238 


place 


see information 






| Star Students of the Past 



ASTRONOMY 


The WONDROUS SCIENCE of the STARS 


A stronomy. The 

earliest man and the 
simplest savage could 
not escape some thought 
about things in nature, 
the earth under his feet, 
the waters and the winds, 
animals and plants, and 
the heavens above his 
head. The changeless¬ 
ness of the ever-changing sky did not escape the gaze 
of the early shepherds on the hills, of the primitive 
mariner or hunter who guided his course by the 
stars, and of the plowman who planted and har¬ 
vested at the will of sun and moon. Everything 
in life about prim¬ 
itive man on land 
and water, his 
waking and his 
dreaming hours, 
all seemed in some 
mysterious way to 
obey the voices of 
the heavens, to 
change with the 
shifting stars and 
moon and the sink¬ 
ing and rising sun. 

Is it any wonder 
then that the study 
of astronomy goes 
back to the earli¬ 
est times and that 
its scope is as 
broad as the uni¬ 
verse? 

The ancient 
Greeks, without 
telescopes or mod¬ 
ern instruments, 
obtained a surpris¬ 
ing knowledge of 
the heavens; but 
they owed a great debt to still earlier peoples, the 
Chaldeans and Egyptians who lived in the valleys 
of the Euphrates and the Nile. It is told of the early 
Greek astronomers that they used to go to Egypt, 
where the science of the stars was jealously guarded 
by the priests, to learn the secret of determining 
the numhnr of days in a year. 

Without a considerable knowledge of the heavens, 
our remote ancestors could not devise the simplest 
calendar to foretell the seasons. More important 
still, they could not navigate the seas. To astronomy 
we owe the first voyages of the Phoenicians, and to 
astronomy in later times we are indebted for the 
discovery of America. 


More than a century 
before the Christian era 
the Greeks were familiar 
with the apparent uni¬ 
form motion of the fixed 
stars and the variable 
motions of the planets, 
and with the idea that 
the earth was a sphere. 
They knew how to meas¬ 
ure latitude and longitude and how to foretell 
eclipses; they had determined the fact and effect of 
the precession of the equinoxes, a discovery that is 
the more remarkable when we realize that the 
so-called “precession” alters the time of the equi¬ 
noxes (roughly, the 
beginning of spring 
and fall) by only a 
few minutes each 
year (see Equinox 
and Solstice). One 
of the greatest of 
these early observ¬ 
ers was Ptolemy, 
the Greek astron¬ 
omer and geogra¬ 
pher, whose books 
were the standard 
sources of infor¬ 
mation for over a 
thousand years. 
His chief astro¬ 
nomical error was 
in believing that 
the earth was the 
center of the heav¬ 
ens, and that the 
sun, planets, and 
fixed stars re¬ 
volved around it. 

The modern sci¬ 
ence of astronomy 
begins with Coper¬ 
nicus (1473-1543) who first saw that it is the 
sun, and not the earth, that is the center of what we 
now call the “solar system.” Other observers con¬ 
firmed this theory. The next great advances were 
due to the invention of the telescope in the 17th cen¬ 
tury, and the discovery of the law of gravitation by 
Sir Isaac Newton. 

The telescope immensely increased our powers of 
observation. But the progress of the science would 
be slow if observation were not coupled with a cor¬ 
responding effort to discover and apply, by means of 
interpretation, the underlying laws of the heavens. 
Newton’s discovery was a great triumph of interpre¬ 
tation. Galileo first found the satellites of Jupiter, 


TTOW wonderful are the Heavens, whose glory sparkles 
above us in the silent night! And how amazing is 
the knowledge which the Science of Astronomy enables 
man to wrest from them—of the Sun, Moon, and Planets 
of our own Solar System, of wandering comets and misty 
nebulae, of the size and constitution and enormous number 
of the fixed stars—the nearest of which is so distant that its 
light takes three years to reach us, while others are so 
remote that rays now coming to the Earth started on their 
rapid journey some 200,000 years ago ! 



HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY BY THE STARS 
If you should be lost at night, would you know how to find your way? Down in 
the kindergarten the little tots sing a song: 

“This way’s east and this way’s west. 

Soon I’ll learn to know the rest.” 

They do learn, too. They learn that if one stands with the right hand pointing 
to the morning sun, one faces north, and the back is to the south. But they do 
not learn, until they are much older, and sometimes not at all, how to find then- 
way at night. And it’s worst of all to be lost at night, too. 

Very high in the sky, on clear nights, is always to be seen a certain group of bright 
stars. There are seven stars in the group, and they make a very big dipper with 
a handle. Four of the stars form the bowl, two at the top, two nearer together at 
the bottom. The other three stars make a handle for the dipper. The last star is 
lower, giving a bend to the handle. Now, you must fix your eyes on the two stars 
that form the outer line of the dipper’s bowl, from the bottom to the top. Imagine 
a straight line connecting those stars. Extend that line upward in the same direc¬ 
tion until it runs into another bright star. That is the north or polar star. Face 
toward the polar star and you will be looking almost due north. For many hun¬ 
dreds of years sailors guided vessels over wide seas by this polar star. So don’t 
you think it might be useful to a lost child? 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

239 










What Stars are Made Of 



| ASTRONOMY 

but he did not know why they revolved around that 
planet instead of flying off into space; Newton sup¬ 
plied the explanation. But a knowledge of laws such 
as Newton’s does more than merely explain what has 
already been observed. They enable the astronomer 
to make new discoveries and to predict the changes 
in the heavens thousands of years in advance. 

The Thousands of Suns We See at Night 

As a result of astronomical discoveries our concep¬ 
tion of the universe is vastly different from that of our 
ancestors. We know now that the sun, upon which 
we depend for our daily existence, is simply one among 
millions of the fixed stars, and that practically every 
star we see on a clear night is likewise a sun and may 
be surrounded by planets such as the earth (see Earth; 
Star; Sun and Solar System). 

We know that the earth is only one of the eight 
chief 'planets which revolve about the sun, the whole 
comprising what we call the solar system. To the 
naked eye the planets have the appearance of stars. 
They are infinitely smaller, however, and are especi¬ 
ally distinguished by the fact that they radiate no 
light of their own, but shine with the light they reflect 
from the sun. Within the solar system there is a 
group of similar bodies, much smaller in size, called 
“asteroids” or “planetoids.” The moon is a satellite 
which revolves around the earth (see Asteroids; 
Planets). 

Now and then this orderly system of sun and 
planets entertains visitors who come from we don’t 
know where and seem quite out of place in our plan¬ 
etary family. These stray bodies we call comets,’ 
from the Greek word meaning “hair” for the reason 
that they resemble a star with a hairy tail. They 
come into the range of our vision for at most a few 
months, and then leave it again—some of them never 
to return (see Comets). 

A Star Apiece for All of Us! 

If by means of an airplane we could travel out into 
space at the same speed as light, that is at the rate of 
186,330 miles a second, we should reach Neptune, the 
farthest planet, in about four hours. But to reach 
the nearest fixed star, Alpha Centauri, would require 
more than three years. From some of the more re¬ 
mote, astronomers calculate that light rays are now 
reaching us that started 200,000 years ago! This 
gives some idea of the enormous distances which sep¬ 
arate our solar system from the stars we see in the 
heavens. 

No one pretends to know how many stars there are, 
but astronomers of the royal observatory at Green¬ 
wich, England, have estimated the number to be 
between 770,000,000 and 1,800,000,000. If the latter 
figure is correct it means that there are just about as 
many stars in the heavens as there are people on the 
earth. Through the use of the telescope it has been 
found that a great number of stars are really double; 
that is, they consist of two stars revolving about each 
other, though to the unaided eye they look like one. 


Of special interest to students interested in the 
evolution of the stars and the origin of the solar sys¬ 
tem are numerous bright objects, each of which has 
the appearance through the telescope of a small bright 
cloud or patch of light. Such a body is called a 
“nebula,” from the Latin word meaning a “small 
cloud.” Nebulae have many different shapes, some 
irregular, like the great nebula in the constellation 
Orion, and some spiral, the latter being regarded by 
some astronomers as the type of nebula from which 
the solar system evolved. The nebulae are undoubt¬ 
edly composed of gases, including hydrogen and prob¬ 
ably helium; and the idea has been advanced by some 
that they represent the fixed stars in the early stages 
of their development (see Nebulae). 

What is a “ Shooting Star ”? 

Besides the bodies already described, everyone has 
seen the bright moving flashes in the heavens which 
we incorrectly call “ shooting stars.” Instead of being 
stars, many of these objects are so small that they 
could be held in the hands. They are in fact mere 
fragments or particles of stars, properly known as 
meteors, which burn to a white heat when they come 
in contact with the earth’s atmosphere. One theory 
is that they are caused by the breaking up of comets. 
Such fragments as fall to the earth from time to time 
are called meteorites, and are commonly composed of 
stone or iron (see Meteors and Meteorites). 

It is evident that astronomy is far from a completed 
science, though in 1844 Auguste Comte, the French 
philosopher, asserted that all had been learned about 
the stars that could be learned and any more study 
was just a waste of time! Just a few years afterward 
the invention of the spectroscope opened up an en¬ 
tirely new field and made it possible to make dis¬ 
coveries that Comte regarded as utterly beyond the 
range of human knowledge. With the spectroscope, 
which is an instrument constructed on the principle 
of the prism, astronomers have been able to discover a 
great number of the substances that compose the sun 
and stars; they are certain, for example, that the sun 
contains such elements as hydrogen, oxygen, helium, 
copper, iron, silver, and lead, as well as a number of 
elements of which we have no knowledge on the earth. 
The spectroscope is also used to determine the motion 
of the stars in respect to each other, especially when 
they are moving to or from the direction of the earth 
(see Spectrum and Spectroscope). 

Photography has likewise been of immense service 
to astronomy, making it possible to record heavenly 
objects with the greatest accuracy. For many years 
the principal observatories of the world have been 
engaged in photographing the entire heavens, and the 
completed work will consist of more than 22,000 sep¬ 
arate plates or photographs, showing in all about 
8,000,000 stars. 

Practical Uses of Astronomy 

We no longer believe, as did the old astrologists, 
that the motions of the stars and planets exercise some 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

240 






THE WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY AND SOME OF ITS USES 




Galileo 

4* the father of 
I telescopic astronoj 


Extent 

of solar system 


SATURN 
a planet 
having 8 / 
moons M 


NEBULAE 

in early 
stages of 


Only one of 

w millions of similar ■ 
suns. Composed of Ky-1 
drogen, oxygen, beliuml 
^copper, iron, silver, J 
lead,and other 

ubstance^^^B 


FIXED STAR 
★ so far distant 
from the earth that, though it 
moves with terrificspeed.it 
appears stationary 


DOUBLE STARS 
. revolve around 
* each other and 
appear as one 


stages of 

development.Compose d ofgases 


' METEOR 

ir (Shooting Star) 
a small heavenly body made white 
hot by its flight through the earth's 
atmosphere 


f MOON 
EARTH W a dead 
a sphere satellite 
of the earth 




The measurement of tinoe.without which 
modern business would be impossible 


The discovering and charting 
of strange lands 


Navigators could not steer atrue course on the seas 
unless they Knew the motions of the heavenly 
bodies 

Nepturle—._ 

farthest^/^^ 

planet/in solar \ «*$>' 

, / *e> \ n ** 

system % \ ^0.0°° th 

/ / O \ \ 


Knowing latitude and longitude enables 
to find the exact location of sinking ship 


Alpha 
CentauTi 
the nearest 
fixed star 


les ins* 
moment of 
other heavenly*,*! 


Astronomy has given us a 
knowledge oF the tremendous 
vastness of space 


We no longer believe in Astrology, but just look how much the stars have to do with the affairs, the great affairs, of men; the discovery and 
charting of new worlds, the measurement of time, navigation upon the world’s wide waters, and the rescue of ships in trouble. In the center 
is a picture of the great Galileo, seated by a frame containing two telescopes of the early type. The larger of the two is about the size ox 
the instrument with which he discovered four of the moons of Jupiter. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


241 


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ASTRONOMY 


The Speck We Call “The Earth” 



mysterious influence on the fortunes of men or the 
course of human events; nevertheless astronomy has 
very important practical uses. We do not obtain 
correct time from watches or “regulators,” but from 
the stars. In the United States the time observations 
are made at the naval observatory at Washington, 
and every noon the correct time is flashed by tele¬ 
graph to all parts of the country. Just as Columbus 
looked to the stars to guide him to the New World, 
so the ship captain of today must look to the heavens 
in directing his course out of sight of land. Naviga¬ 
tion is, in fact, a branch of astronomy; and one reason 
why all great countries have national astronomical 
observatories is the aid which they furnish to maritime 
commerce. Astronomy has likewise supplied the 


fundamental facts for such sciences as meteorology 
or the science of the weather, and geology. Geodesy, 
the science which measures and surveys the earth, 
also depends largely on astronomy for its methods. 

The future of astronomy of course cannot be pre¬ 
dicted, but astronomers admit that they have only 
begun to explore the wonders of infinite space. 
Enormous as our solar system is, the starry heavens 
within the range of modern telescopes constitute a 
field of study millions of times greater, and for an 
astronomer the exploration of this vast area with its 
hundreds of millions of suns has all the romance and 
excitement of a journey to the source of the Amazon 
or an expedition to the North Pole. (See also Ob¬ 
servatory; Telescope.) 


The Boundless Universe 


imagination of men goes out beyond 
power of words to follow it when it 
rs into the universe. We live on our 
le Earth, which is part of the Solar 
System, but beyond the Solar System are immensities 
of space above conception. 

We take our Solar System, the system revolving 
round our Sun, and even here the facts are staggering 
beyond all understanding; but the truth is that in 
the boundless universe the Solar System is like a grain 
of sand upon the seashore. The Sun is about 866,000 
miles across, with a mass about 332,000 times that 
of the Earth, and it is nearly 93 million miles away 
from us. Round him swing eight planets—Mercury, 
Mars, and Venus, smaller than the Earth, and Jupiter, 
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, immensely larger than 
the Earth; and the distances of these planets from 
the Sun vary from 36 million miles in the case of 
Mercury, to 2,750 million miles in the case of Neptune. 

Worlds Beyond Worlds, and Still More Beyond 
Truly, as Lord Tennyson said, the thoughts of men 
are “widened with the process of the suns.” It was 
not so very long ago that Saturn was the farthest thing 
we knew anything about in space—Saturn, with 
that marvelous ring of millions of tiny moons encir¬ 
cling it, incomparably the grandest spectacle to be 
seen in the heavens. Saturn is about 886 million 
miles from the Sun, and it represented the limits of the 
Solar System until about a century and a half ago. 
But then Uranus was discovered, nearly a thousand 
million miles beyond it; and then men turned their 
eyes on Neptune, a thousand million miles farther 
still. That is. how the map of the Solar System has 
widened since the telescope revealed the heavens to 
us; and beyond the bounds of the Solar System the 
same thing has been happening. Outside this system 
lie millions upon millions of mighty worlds, swinging 
about in space, and the more our knowledge grows 
the more the wonder of the universe grows too. 

Let us try to realize something of the wonder in 
the midst of which our Earth is set. If it is beyond 


the power of words to describe, it is beyond the power 
of the human mind to understand the glory of the uni¬ 
verse. The plain truth of it, the simple statement of 
its vastness and power, is beyond the wildest reach of 
our imagining. We look up at the stars by night, 
and the stillness of the skies seems a wonderful thing; 
but it is more wonderful than we know, for the stars 
whirl about with unthinkable speed, dazzling space 
with their light for thousands of millions of miles. 
Nothing that we know moves anything like so fast; 
no light that we have ever seen is anything like so 
bright. One small star among them is a laggard, 
creeping through space at 43,000 miles an hour, and 
attending on his round is a tiny globe a million times 
smaller, lit up with the light of the laggard star. 

That laggard is the Sun, and the little globe is the 
Earth! 

The Earth sweeps round the Sun in an orbit 180 
million miles across. If the Earth were big enough 
to fill this orbit, instead of being so small that it is 
almost lost in it, it would still need over a million 
earths like that to match Orion, a fragment of the 
Milky Way. 

The group of stars we call Orion is hundreds of 
millions of times as big as the Earth; they are so far 
back in space from us that we see the stars as mere 
dots of light. Try to let the mind run back to them, 
and we are lost in the depths of a universe that no 
man knows. The space the Solar System occupies 
is said to be a thousand million times greater than 
the volume of the Sun and all the planets. One of 
the smallest of the stars, a sort of atom in the uni¬ 
verse, smaller than any star we see by night, is our 
Sun. But it is all the world to us, because it is so 
near. It is hardly a hundred million miles away; 
and to this nearness of the Sun we owe our habitation 
on this Earth, the produce of our fields and gardens, 
the power that moves our guns and lights our homes, 
and the beating of the heart of every living thing. 

Let your mind run back only to the Sun—like a 
run up a street as distance goes in the universe— 



For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

242 








| What a “Light-Year” I~ 


ASTRONOMY 


and how many stars would you find there, keeping 
the Sun company? Draw a circle about the Sun 
300 million million miles round, and in it there would 
be four other stars. If a man were living in New 
York and his nearest neighbor were in Tasmania, he 
would probably yearn for company; but compared 
with the loneliness of our universe, a world peopled 
at that rate would seem crowded like pebbles on the 
beach! The Solar System in which our Earth re¬ 
volves is 6,000 million 
miles across; and yet 
this system, with all the 
worlds that come into 
our view as the year 
goes round, is a lonely 
thing, immensely isolated 
in space, cut off from 
other groups of worlds 
more utterly than any 
two people could possibly 
be if they two were left 
all alone upon the Earth. 

How vividly, as we 
think of these things, we 
realize that the affairs 
of the United States, the 
history of the World 
War, and even the whole 
Earth itself, are like the 
flickering of a candle in 
the vast immensity of all 
God’s boundless worlds. 

Think what the Earth 
is; then remember that 
it is like a dot in the 
whole Solar System. 

Farther and farther out 
our knowledge of the 
Solar System goes. Not 
long ago, as we have 
seen, we found a world that lies a thousand million 
miles beyond anything we knew, and it is almost 
certain that we shall find another world—or other 
worlds—beyond. Inside this Solar System roll Earth’s 
neighbors—those other children of the Sun that we 
call Mars and Mercury and Venus and Saturn and 
Jupiter and Neptune and Uranus; and the vast space 
they move about in, the space inhabited by our Sun 
and his family of planets, is as far across as two mil¬ 
lion earths would be. We cannot even conceive what 
that means. We begin to understand what the French 
philosopher Pascal meant when he said that the 
eternal silence of these infinite spaces made him afraid. 

We see, then, that the Earth is a dot in the great 
Solar System, but what shall we say of that system 
itself? It is just another dot in the universe in which 
it moves! It is beyond our power to understand it at 
all; we can only think of it and wonder more and 
more. We look up at the group of stars we call Orion, 
so quiet and glorious up there in the sky, and these 


stars are hundreds of million times as big as our 
Earth. It is said that if we took the Sun and all its 
planets, and made them into one huge ball, it would 
take a thousand million of these balls to fill the space 
the Solar System occupies. 

Boundless beyond all thinking is the space that 
lies outside the path of all these swinging worlds. So 
great is distance in the heavens that we cannot meas¬ 
ure it in miles; we count it, instead, according to 
the distance light travels 
in a year. A ray of light 
will travel in one year 
just over 5,840,000,000,- 
000 miles and that is the 
distance we mean every 
time we speak of a 
“light-year.” Well, so 
far as men can measure 
it, the bounds of the 
universe were reckoned 
a few years ago to be 
not less than two thousand 
light-years away; that is, 
a great deal more than 
ten thousand million 
million miles. It may 
be said that that was the 
distance of the farthest 
thing we knew; and in a 
universe like that, the 
Earth is as a speck of 
dust, and the Solar 
System as a straw blown 
in the wind. 

Far Greater than We 
Dreamed 

But now, during the 
years of the World War, 
a new and astounding 
chapter has been added 
to our knowledge of the universe beyond our Solar 
System. The universe in which the Sun, the Earth, 
and all the boundless realms of stars move on and on 
forever is even greater than we knew! We used to think 
its farthest limit perhaps two thousand light-years 
away; what we now believe is that it may be two 
hundred thousand light-years away. The ten-thou¬ 
sand-million-million limit that men had set to the 
outer universe has now become, let us say, a million- 
million-million limit! We may say that the new 
knowledge quietly accumulated in the world during 
the World War widened the bounds of the known 
universe one hundred times, so that the immensity 
of space, with all its myriads of worlds, is a hundred 
times greater than we dreamed of. 

Of one great cluster of stars alone, the cluster of 
Hercules, we can photograph the light today which 
left the stars 36,000 years ago, when most of Europe 
was under ice; and so inconceivable is the size of 
this group of stars that a ray of light from a star on 


SATURN AND ITS RINGS 



Saturn, of all the worlds we know, is the only one that has rings around 
it. It is difficult to tell whether there are three or only two rings about 
the planet, as you can see. The rings are made up of an incalculable 
number of very small meteor-like particles. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


243 


a t 


the 


end of this 


Work 







Why Uranus was Tardy | 


[astronomy 

one side of it takes 300 years to cross to the other 
side! Clearly, we can only suggest, in a short chapter 
such as this, what this boundless universe is known 
to be. 

How do we know of all these wondrous things 
existing beyond man’s sight or sound? It would 
take too long to tell the marvelous story of the great 
discoveries that men have made, but perhaps we may 
take one example of the way in which the explorers 
of the universe set out and reach their journey’s end. 
Let us take perhaps the most amazing chapter in the 
whole history of astronomy—the discovery of Neptune. 

Mystery of the Missing World 

Once upon a time a world was missing from its 
place, so two men set out to find the reason. They 
found it. It was one of the greatest triumphs of the 
human mind. The world had left its calculated path. 
It had made a call on its way and it was late in 
arriving, and all the astronomers of the Earth were 
baffled. What could have happened to that world? 
It had gone a little way to meet another world, a thou¬ 
sand million miles beyond it, a world no man had 
ever seen, of which no man had ever heard; and when 
the secret was discovered, there was written one of 
the most amazing tales that has been put in a book. 

It began long ago and far away; we must go back 
50,000 days in time and thousands of millions of 
miles in space; and we must think of a little world 
that spins through space about 1,800 million miles 
away from us—a world not yet finished, scores of 
times bigger than the Earth, but not yet cool and 
solid, a sort of boiling vaporous mass 30,000 miles 
across, with a year as long as 80 of ours. It is called 
Uranus. 

For centuries Uranus had been seen. Thousands 
of times the old astronomers of Assyria and Chaldea 
must have looked at it, but it was thought to be a 
star and no more. It was not till just over a century 
ago that Uranus was found to be a planet, one of the 
Sun’s great families of worlds. 

It lay far beyond the path of the most distant 
planet known. The universe beyond the orbit of 
Saturn was impenetrable darkness to man, except 
for the eternal movement of the stars. Saturn was 
the boundary line of knowledge. We knew there 
were worlds on this side of her path, but no man 
dreamed that there were worlds beyond. 

Finding a World with a Home-made Telescope 

It was an organist at Bath, in England, looking 
through his home-made telescope, who saw Uranus 
on March 13, 1781, and knew it to be more than a 
star. His name was William Herschel, the first 
modern man on earth to discover a planet. He 
could not know all that is known today from his 
discovery; he could not trace Uranus through the 
heavens and mark its track as we can do, for Uranus 
goes round the sun but once in a century. It takes 81 
years to complete the journey round the Sun which 
our Earth makes between January and December, 


and life is all too short for discoverers of worlds' like 
these to complete their observations. But men may 
come and men may go, and their work goes on for¬ 
ever. Other men watched Uranus, other men marked 
its track, and there is not an hour of its journey since 
Herschel first saw it that has not been noted down. 
We know where it was on any day since it was 
found; we know where it was on any day before it was 
found; we know where it will be on any day in ten 
thousand years to come. The universe does not fail; 
its wheels go round while nations rise and fall and 
mountains crumble into dust. 

Well, it was Uranus that had strayed from its cal¬ 
culated path. Every day and hour it had been 
watched since William Herschel found it. Every 
movement was recorded, that a history might be 
made of the full circle of its 81 years. Herschel’s 
work on earth was ending, and Uranus was half-way 
round its circle. Then one day a French astronomer, 
keeping his time-tables of the worlds, found, in 1821, 
that Uranus was not where it should have been. He 
could not believe his eyes. 

The Strange Conduct of Uranus 

That world was out of its predicted place, and the 
watchmen of the skies were all bewildered. A train 
may be a minute late, a ship may be a day late, but 
these things do not happen in the universe. And 
Uranus continued to be late. The time-table that 
was wrong in 1821 was still wrong in 1830. Uranus 
was out of her path by 20 seconds in 1830, by 90 
seconds in 1840, by 128 seconds in 1846. Nothing 
like this had happened in the memory of astronomy, 
and the wanderings of Uranus were the talk of 
observatories for a quarter of a century. Nowhere 
in the skies was anything more exciting. Something 
tremendous, something unknown, was happening 
somewhere. One of the greatest mysteries ever 
presented to the mind of man was awaiting his 
solution. 

Remember that Uranus was the first planet the 
modern explorers of the skies had found. It had gone 
only half-way round its path when it was missed. 
It was expected to follow a particular path, according 
to all known laws; it followed the path for 40 years 
and then swerved outward.. It had been doing that 
for millions of years and no man had seen it; and 
what was happening now, with the farthest world 
we knew leaving us to reach out farther still, was 
almost incredible to the men who were looking on. 
For behind this outward swerve of Uranus must be 
some momentous power. Till 40 years before, the 
path of Saturn was the boundary of our knowledge 
of the planets. But Uranus was as far beyond 
Saturn as Saturn was beyond the Earth; and what 
the swerve of Uranus meant was that there was 
something farther still, something perhaps as far 
beyond Uranus as Uranus is from Saturn. 

It meant that this new world, more than a thousand 
million miles from the Earth, was pulled out by another 
world a thousand million miles farther still! 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

244 







Professor J. C. Adams, one of the discoverers of Neptune, is here explaining to a friend the calculations by which he came to the conclusion 
that there was a new world to be discovered in the heavens at the point indicated by his index finger. You can see that this occurred back 
in the 1840’s when men wore stocks and cutaway coats with double rows of bright brass buttons. In the background is the telescope used 
in the observatory of Cambridge University at that time, together with the chair where the observer sat to study the heavens. The telescopes 

we have in our observatories today are a great deal larger than this. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

245 


DISCOVERING A NEW WORLD BY MATHEMATICS 











































ASTRONOMY 


The Mystery of Uranus 


HOW NEPTUNE INTERFERED WITH URANUS 


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in 1830 


NEPTUNE 
in 1810 


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in 1840 


NEPTUNE (fei 
in 1800 


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It is hard to comprehend at first how Neptune could hurry Uranus forward in one part of its path through the sky and hold it back in another, 
yet when you examine this picture-diagram how simple it all becomes! You see, in one part of the orbits of the two planets Neptune is 
pulling forward like a boy drawing his sled up hill. The result is that between 1800 and 1810 Uranus moved along much faster than its 
ordinary gait, while between 1830 and 1840 conditions were just the opposite. By 1840 Neptune was pulling almost straight back on Uranus, 
which was trying as hard as ever it could to go on its regular round. It was this swerving of Uranus from its course that caused astronomers 
to believe that an unknown world was pulling it, and so led to the discovery of Neptune. 


The bounds of space were widening fast. The dis¬ 
covery of Uranus was a triumph of knowledge, but 
something greater still was now to come, for the 
discovery of a world beyond it was a mighty leap of 
faith. If men tell you that faith is nothing, tell 
them that faith found Neptune, 2,750 million miles 
away. Long before the first telescope was turned 
towards Neptune, men knew that it was there. 
They saw it in faith as Columbus saw America from 
Spain. They saw it as Francis Drake, up a tree at 
Panama, saw his ship sailing the Pacific. 

This mighty leap of faith that bridged a thousand 
million miles beyond the last milestone of knowledge 
was soon to be tested, and to be justified abundantly. 
Uranus was lost in 1821. Twelve years later it was 
suggested that there must be a disturbing body 
beyond it; 12 years later still the disturbing body 
was found. It was found by arithmetic. But for two 

For any subject not found in its 


young men who were clever with arithmetic at school, 
we might never have known of Neptune. They knew 
there could be no other explanation of the swerving 
of Uranus except that an unknown world was pulling 
it. They knew when Uranus was pulled, and how 
far it was pulled; what was now to be worked out 
was the nature of the force that pulled it. It was 
just a question of arithmetic. 

If a world of such a size , traveling at such a rate 
1,750 million miles away, was SO seconds late in 
arriving at a given point, what was the size and speed 
and distance and pull of the force that kept it back, and 
when would this unknown force arrive at a given point? 

That was the problem two men set out to solve. 
One was French and the other was English, two 
mathematicians, neither knowing the other—Urbain 
Leverrier in France and Prof. J. C. Adams at Cam¬ 
bridge, England. 

Iphabetical place see information 













It was Neptune that Did It 


By one of the most astounding coincidences in the 
history of science, both these men, unknown to the 
other, set out to solve the mystery of Uranus by 
arithmetic. In October 1845, Professor Adams sent 
his calculations to Greenwich Observatory, where they 
lay unUsed for months, so that before Greenwich 
had tested them Leverrier published his figures. The 
two sets of figures were amazingly near to each other, 
and Professor Adams hastened to urge the Astronomer 
Royal at Greenwich to test his calculations. 

That was on Sept. 2, 1846, and on Sept. 10 a 
great astronomer told the British Association that 
they were on the eve of the discovery of a world 
no man had seen. “We see it as Columbus saw 
America from the shores of Spain,” he said. “Its 
movements have been felt trembling along the far- 
reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly 
inferior to sight.” 

The Hidden World that Did the Pulling! 

Eight days after that Leverrier wrote to Dr. Galle, 
the astronomer at the observatory at Berlin, and 
asked him to turn his telescope to a particular spot 
in the sky. “There,” he wrote to Dr. Galle, “you 
will see a planet which I have not seen, and which 
no human eye has ever seen; but it must lie in that 
spot, because calculations have pointed out the ne¬ 
cessity for its existence.” Dr. Galle had an accurate 
chart of the stars in the region Leverrier described. 
On Sept. 23, 1846, he turned his telescope to the 
spot and found a bright light that was not on his 
chart. It was Neptune, the most distant world we 
know. 

That is how faith and arithmetic found a world—a 
world 90 times bigger than the Earth and not far 
short of 3,000 million miles from the Sun. It is still 


ATALANTA] 

dreams. It has not yet completed its first circle 
round the Sun since it was found in 1846. The Earth 
goes round the Sun in 365 days; Neptune goes round 
in 165 years. It was first seen at Leverrier’s given 
point in 1846; it will not reach that point again 
until 2010. Where will this world be then, and you, 
and I? 

Wonderful Machinery of the Moving World 

One thing this chapter of astronomy teaches us: 
discovery of Neptune was possible because all this 
moving wonder moves to order. It is in complete 
control. No machine that man has made moves so 
perfectly, so silently, as this company of worlds. A 
man in 1682 saw a comet pass. He knew it would 
come back in 1759. The man was dead then, but 
the comet came back. We do not know where the 
United States will be in the year 2004, but we know 
where Venus will be in that year, and the day on 
which she will cross the Sun. We know that the 
Sun and the Earth are flying to a point in Hercules; 
we know they fly about 1,036,800 miles a day. It is 
said that the Sun and the Earth might collide; but 
our astronomers, the silent watchers of the universe, 
tell us that the Earth and Sun have traveled thousands 
of miles an hour for millions of years without an 
accident, and we are not afraid. These worlds are 
not blown hither and thither as feathers in the wind. 
They go the way marked out for them; they are 
subject to the laws by which a violet grows; they 
obey the Mind that dominates your life and mine. 
At ALAN'TA. The fleetest-footed maiden of all the 
lands of Greece, and one of the loveliest, according 
to Greek myths, was an Arcadian king’s daughter 
named Atalanta. When this fair princess was born, 
her father—disappointed to see a daughter instead 



Atalanta, princess of Boeotia, had offered herself in marriage to any man who could outrun her, but this no man could do. Aphrodite, 
however, gave Hippomenes three golden apples and told him to throw them before her during the race. Atalanta stopped to pick 
them up, and lost the contest. The picture is Edward J. Poynter’s famous ‘Atalanta’s Race’. 


WHY ATALANTA 


LOST THE RACE 


like a boiling mass; it has not yet shaped itself or 
cooled into a solid. We know that it has elements 
that make it up which are unlike any elements on 
Earth, but we know very little of this stupendous 
world that rolls and rolls and rolls so far beyond our 

contained in the Easy Reference 


of the longed-for son—left her on a high mountain 
to the mercy of wild beasts and the elements. She 
was nursed by a she-bear, and was saved by some 
hunters who carried her to their home, where they 
trained her to be a skilled huntress. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

247 









1 ATALANTA 



ATHENA 


When at last Atalanta was restored to her father’s 
court, the king, having no other heir, entreated her 
to marry. Many youths came seeking to win her 
hand. But Atalanta, anxious to keep her freedom, 
declared that she would wed only the youth who 
should outrun her in a foot race, and 
further that all who entered the race 
and were unsuccessful must forfeit 
their lives. Many of the youths dis¬ 
creetly withdrew; while others, more 
rash, were outrun and perished. 

At last there came a youth who had 
obtained the protection of the goddess 
Aphrodite (Venus), and carried con¬ 
cealed beneath his garment her gift of 
three golden apples. When the race 
began, Atalanta as usual easily passed 
her rival; but as she sped onward, an 
apple of gold rolled past her feet. 

For a moment she hesitated, then 
turned aside to pick up the precious 
fruit. Her adversary thus gained the 
lead, but soon Atalanta again over¬ 
took and passed him. A second apple 
then tempted her from her course, 
and a second time she lost and then 
recovered her lead, and sped on faster 
than before. She had all but won the 
race when the youth tossed the third 
golden treasure in her path. In the 
moment that she paused to pick it up, 
he passed her and reached the goal. 

True to her promise, Atalanta mar¬ 
ried the youth who had outrun her. 

Unhappily the bridegroom forgot to 
give due thanks to Aphrodite, and 
that jealous goddess severely punished both him and 
his wife by turning them into lions to drag the chariot 
of Cybele, the mystical mother of the gods. 
ATHE'NA. Of all the gods of Greece, next to Father 
Zeus himself, his daughter Athena was the wisest. 
She was especi¬ 
ally the “goddess 
of wisdom,” and 
old myths told 
the strange story 
of her birth- 
how she had 
sprung full- 
grown, and 
armed with 
shield and spear, 
from the head of 
Zeus and startled 
heaven and earth 
with her battle- 
cry. 

Athena was the patroness of all the heroes who 
fought against evil men and monsters. Thus she was 
the constant companion of Hercules in his toilsome 


adventures; she helped the Argonauts in their quest 
of the Golden Fleece; she was the guide of Odysseus 
(Ulysses) in his many wanderings. On her shield was 
the head of the snaky-haired Gorgon, Medusa, that 
the hero Perseus had slain through her aid, and which 
had the power of turning to stone 
those who gazed upon it. 

In the long war about the walls of 
mighty Troy, Athena was ever the 
friend and counselor of the Greek 
chieftains. The poet Homer tells how 
once, when Ares (Mars), the hated god 
of war, and soft hearted Aphrodite 
(Venus) were aiding the Trojans, the 
goddess Hera (Juno) cried out to her 
husband Zeus: 

“ Hast thou no indignation with false 
Ares for these violent deeds? Wilt 
thou be wroth with me if I smite him 
and chase him from the battle in 
sorry plight?” 

And Zeus the cloud-gatherer 
answered her: 

“Go to now, set upon him Athena, 
who most is wont to bring sore pain 
upon him.” 

Then bright-eyed Athena cast down 
at her father’s threshold her woven 
vesture, many-colored, that she herself 
had wrought, and arrayed her in her 
armor for doleful battle. Grasping 
her spear, great and stout, she took 
her place upon the flaming chariot 
while Hera smote the horses with 
stinging lash. 

In the plain about Troy they found 
blood-stained Ares; and Athena, leaping upon the 
chariot of the hero Diomedes, cried: 

“At Ares guide now thy horses, and smite him hand 
to hand, and I will help thee.” 

Then Diome¬ 
des with loud 
war-cry drove 
straight at Ares. 
Athena turned 
aside the war- 
god’s thrust but 
Diomedes’ spear 
of bronze she 
guided home 
against Ares’ 
body, wounding 
him sore. When 
he felt the pain, 
brazen Ares bel¬ 
lowed loud as 
when ten thous¬ 
and warriors cry out in battle, and like a cloud he 
fled from earth to Mount Olympus. 

But Athena loved peace more than war, for she was 



Reproduction of the famous bronze 
statue of Athena which stood on the 
Acropolis, where the gleam of its 
spear point could be seen as Athenian 
sailors rounded Cape Sunium. 



Figures from the Panathenaic Procession on the Frieze of the Parthenon. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 


248 





















How Athena Treated Arachne 


ATHENS 



the goddess of spinning and weaving, agriculture, and 
all the useful arts. The invention of the plow and the 
loom was ascribed to her. She was the protector of 
towns and her city of Athens was especially sacred to 
her. How this city came to bear her name is ex¬ 
plained by one of the old legends. Zeus had decreed 
that the city should be awarded to that one of the 
gods who should create the most useful gift for its 
inhabitants. Poseidon (Neptune) created the horse, 
but Athena, with superior wisdom, created the olive- 
tree, the sign of peace and source of prosperity, and 
the prize was given to her. 

Athena was very proud of her skill as a weaver, and 
this once led her to an act of great injustice. A girl 
named Arachne had rashly boasted that she could 
weave as well as the goddess Athena herself. Athena 
heard this boast, and came to Arachne in the form of 
an old woman. She advised the girl to take back her 
words, but Arachne refused. Then the bent old 
woman changed suddenly into the wrathful goddess 
Athena, and cried: 

“Prove now, O silly girl, your daring boast!” 

The two stood at looms side by side and wove cloth 
covered with most wonderful pictures. When the 
goddess discovered that she could find no fault with 
Arachne’s work, she became terribly angry. She 
struck Arachne and tore the cloth on her loom. 

Arachne w T as so frightened that she tried to kill 
herself. Athena then became sorry for the girl and 
saved her life by changing her into a spider. So 
Arachne lives to this day, and still weaves the most 
wonderful of webs upon the grasses and bushes by 
the roadside. 

Athena was a virgin goddess,—strong, pure, just, 
and wise. She is often called “Pallas Athena” or 
simply “Pallas.” To her as the maiden ( parthenos) 
goddess was dedicated the Parthenon, the beautiful 
temple on the Acropolis of Athens, the most perfect 
building the world has ever seen (see Acropolis). 
Every year at the festival of the Panathenaea, a robe, 
or peplus, woven by Greek maidens, was carried in 
procession through the streets of the city and pre¬ 
sented to the image of the goddess. The huge gold 
and ivory statue of Athena in this temple, wrought by 
Phidias, greatest of Greek sculptors, represented her as 
a grave majestic woman, armed with helmet and 
shield. In one hand she held a statue of Victory 
{Nike), and at her feet was coiled a serpent, symbol 
of wisdom. 

The Roman goddess Minerva, who occupied a similar 
place in the Roman mythology, came to be identified with 
the Greek Athena. 

ATHENS, Greece. It is a thrilling moment when 
one sallsifito theharbor of Piraeus, the port of Athens, 
and first sees in the distance— 

Radiant, violet-crowned, by minstrels sung, 
Bulwark of Hellas, Athens illustrious. 

Rising afar and almost encircling the Attic plain, 
Parnes on the north, Mt. Pentelicus on the northeast, 
and Mt. Hymettus on the east, wrapped in purple 


mist, still give to the “queen of cities” her violet 
crown, and after 2,500 years her glory is not faded. 

Landing at Piraeus, we board a train for Athens, 
five miles away. The railway follows almost the same 
course as the famous “long walls” built by Themis- 
tocles in the 5th century b.c. to connect Athens with 
Piraeus and thus assure the sea-trading Athenians of 
access to sea even though besieged by an enemy’s 
forces. 

The Marble-white City and the Bright Blue Sky 

Modern Athens, lying to the northeast of the 
ancient city, is “a city of whiteness and brightness.” 
The buildings are nearly all of marble or limestone, 
or of stucco made of powdered marble; and seen 
against the brilliant almost transparent blue of the 
clear sky the effect is dazzling. The streets are lined 
with graceful pepper trees, bright green in summer, 
blazing with red berries in the autumn, and every¬ 
where are squares and gardens filled with fragrant 
orange trees, date-palms, and rose-hued oleanders. 
Rising above the modern city and still dominating it 
as in ancient days is the hill of the Acropolis, “its 
noble temples seeming to fairly hang in the air like a 
vision disclosed of Paradise.” 

No one, it is said, can live in the presence of noble 
and beautiful things without being influenced by 
them. Perhaps this accounts for the spirit of cul¬ 
ture that still pervades Athenian life. Even the 
laboring classes, though poorer than in most countries, 
are intelligent and never fail in courtesy. “We teach 
our children to treat people well,” said a Greek to an 
American traveler. 

A People who Live Outdoors 

The Athenians of today, like those of 20 centuries 
ago, love out-of-door life. The restaurants which do 
not have adjoining gardens set their tables on the 
sidewalks. The most popular theaters are those 
roofed only by the sky. A stadium in which games 
and sports are held as in the ancient days was erected 
in 1895 for the first of the new international Olympic 
Games, occupying the site of the old stadium of 
Athens. Crowds gather in the streets to celebrate 
the great festivals—New Year’s Eve, the Carnival 
before Lent, and Easter; and at all times the priests 
of the Greek Orthodox church are familiar figures in 
their long black robes and tall hats. 

The royal palace in Constitution Square is a rather 
plain building of limestone and marble, set in a lux¬ 
uriant garden filled with every kind of flower and 
overshadowed by great pines and giant cypresses. 

From this modern city we easily step back into the 
world of the past. The Arch of Hadrian and the 
great ruined temple of Olympian Zeus are the chief 
remains from the period of Roman rule. Of the 104 
elaborately carved Corinthian columns of the latter, 
each 56 feet in height and more than five feet in 
diameter, only 15 remain erect today. At their base 
little tables are set where fashionable men and 
women gather to gossip and enjoy their coffee and 
loukoumi, or “Turkish delight.” 


contained in the Eaty Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

249 






RUINS THAT RECALL THE GLORIOUS PAST OF ATHENS 



The Parthenon, which crowns the Acropolis, is so wonderful and so important in the history of architecture that it is illustrated and receives 
separate treatment in the article on Architecture. The Monument of Lysicrates is the only one left of a series of choragic monuments which 
once flanked the Street of the Tripods. The Theseum or Temple of Theseus, though not so beautiful as the Parthenon, is a noble example 
of the Doric style, almost perfectly preserved. The Erectheum differs widely from the ordinary plan of Greek temples, having porticoes 
on three sides. The Caryatids are female figures which take the place of columns. The Temple of the Wingless Victory, on the Acropolis, 
is a beautiful example of the Ionic style. This exquisite little structure was built in the latter half of the 5th century B.C. It was demol¬ 
ished when the Parthenon was blown up by a cannon shot of the Turks in 1684, but fortunately the stones were not greatly damaged and 

in 1835 it was rebuilt. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

250 



















































ATHENS 


ATHLETICS 



From the great period of Athens’ independence we 
have the Theseum, or Temple of Theseus—the best 
preserved of all Greek temples. It has suffered some¬ 
what from earthquakes and its marble facing was long 
ago burned to make lime, but its 34 severely beautiful 
Doric columns still support the roof and indicate its 
majestic proportions. 

Passing by the ruins of the Theater of Dionysus, 
where the ancient Athenians listened to the master¬ 
pieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, we 
ascend to the Acropolis. On this rocky plateau, 
which rises 200 feet above the level of the city, we 
come into the midst of the magnificent structures 
which have been the inspiration of all the world. The 
Parthenon as it exists today, shattered, defaced, al¬ 
most entirely roofless, robbed of its statues and won¬ 
derful friezes, is still awe-inspiring in its beauty. Time 
has faded the brilliant painting and gilding with which 
the ancients decorated the pure white marble of their 
noblest temples, but it has given to the marble a 
wonderful color of amber-gold. Someone has re¬ 
marked that the stone seems not to have been taken 
from the earth, but to have been quarried from the 
golden light of the Athenian sunsets (see Acropolis). 

From the Acropolis we look out upon several lesser 
hills. To the west is the Pnyx, where the popular 
assemblies were held; and north of that we see the 
Areopagus—the Hill of Ares (Mars)—which was the 
seat of the venerable court of the Areopagus. Here 
later the Apostle Paul addressed his famous words to 
the Athenians, beginning: “Ye men of Athens, I 
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” 

When we recall that in 1835 Athens, except for the 
ruined monuments of her ancient greatness, was a 
squalid Turkish village, the splendid growth of the 
modem city is all the more remarkable. 

2500 Years of History 

The beginnings of Athens are lost in myth and 
legend. It was said to have been founded by Theseus 
and named in honor of the goddess Athena. When 
the Persians at the beginning of the 5th century b.c. 
sought to conquer Greece, Athens played a leading 
part in resisting the invader. Under the great states¬ 
man Pericles, Athens reached its greatest power and 
splendor. Literature and philosophy flourished and 
those great works of architecture and sculpture were 
produced which made this the Golden Age of Greece. 

But Athens had built up its greatness largely at the 
expense of its allies in the Delian Confederacy, and 
many of them, dissatisfied with this policy, turned to 
its rival Sparta. The war which followed, known as 
the Peloponnesian War, put an end to Athens’ 
imperial greatness. 

As a center of culture Athens^was imperial for cen¬ 
turies more. Philip of Macedon conquered her, in 
spite of the oratory of Demosthenes, but this conquest 
itself became the means of spreading Athenian art and 
literature to the remote corners of Egypt and Asia 
through the world-empire of Philip’s great son Alex¬ 
ander. In Roman times Athens was still the great 

contained in the Easy Reference 


intellectual center. Cicero and many other great 
men of Rome went there to study. 

In the Middle Ages the Goths and other barbarians 
harried Athens as they did Rome. From 1204 to 
1458, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, the city was 
ruled by feudal lords from western Europe. Then the 
Turks conquered Athens as they had Constantinople. 
During a Venetian campaign against Turkey, in 1687, 
the Parthenon was used as a powder magazine by the 
Turks and suffered severely from an explosion caused 
by a Venetian bomb. 

The Greek war of independence (1821-29) made 
Greece free once more and established Athens as the 
capital. In addition to a flourishing university, there 
are in Athens foreign schools of classical archeology 
for advanced students from France, Germany, Great 
Britain, and the United States. Athens is the finan¬ 
cial and governing center of Greece, but its industries, 
chief of which are cotton, silk, and leather manufac¬ 
tures, are located in the flourishing port of Piraeus. 
Population of Athens and Piraeus, about 300,000. 
(See Greece.) 

ATHLETICS. Before the middle of the last century 
there was practically no such thing as organized ath¬ 
letics in the United States, and even in England the 
first intercollegiate contest between Oxford and Cam¬ 
bridge did not take place till 1864. For a long period 
the keen desire of every normal boy 
to excel in athletic sports—to run 
faster, jump higher, or play games 
with more skill and vigor than his 
companions—was only half tolerated, 
and time spent in athletic pursuits 
was often regarded as time lost. 
But the energetic spirit of youth 
finally conquered the old-fashioned 
prejudices, and today men realize 
that athletics form just as essential 
a part of a man’s education as 
books. 

Athletics and the Greatness of the Greeks 

We have really rediscovered a truth which was 
clearly recognized by the ancient Greeks. No race 
has surpassed the Greeks in intellectual ability, nor 
has any race surpassed them in perfection of physical 
development. The cultivation of athletics went hand 
in hand with the cultivation of science and art, and 
their great achievements must be credited to the 
emphasis they placed on training all the faculties, 
physical as well as mental. 

There is no need, nowadays, to point out the ad¬ 
vantage in every occupation or profession which the 
strong, vigorous, clean-cut man, the athletic man, 
possesses. But athletics, rightly considered, means 
much more than the development of mere muscle. 
The true ideals of athletics are not bone and sinew 
alone, but such qualities as quickness and skill; 
courage and manliness; pluck, energy, and endurance 
—in short, strength of mind and of character, as well 
as of body. The good athlete can take a whipping 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

251 







ATHLETICS 


For Girls as Well as Boys~| 


without whimpering; he can 
likewise subordinate and adapt 
himself to the difficult demands 
of team play. He has what is 
called “sportsmanship.” 

The school or college athlete 
usually learns that “playing the 
game” means more than just 
winning. It means representing 
your class, your school, or your 
college in every way. It means 
being a good student as well as 
a good athlete. In fact the very 
best athletes, the boys and men 
who become captains, are those 
who have developed the brains 
of leadership through study. 

A healthy spirit of rivalry gives zest to the game, 
but this can easily be carried too far. It may result 
in forgetting the true spirit 
of fair play, or may lead to 
overtraining and injury to 
health. A moderate amount 
of athletic recreation taken 
all the year around is far 
more beneficial than short 
and strenuous indulgence in 
a particular sport. In fact, 
schools and colleges are tend¬ 
ing more and more toward 
organizing games and con¬ 
tests within their own walls, 
which will give every student 
a chance to take his part in 
the sports of each season. 

Modern Athletics for Men and Women 
In recent years girls and women have come to take 
an increasing interest in ath¬ 
letics. Almost all men’s games 
are played by them, and sta¬ 
tistics gathered in schools and 
girls’ colleges show improved 
physical conditions as the 
result. 

A clear distinction is made 
in the United States between 
amateur and pro¬ 
fessional athletics, 
and an athlete who 
has once lost his amateur standing cannot 
take part in any of the contests under the 
j urisdiction of the national Amateur Athletic 
Union or of the Intercollegiate Association 
of Amateur Athletes of America. These 
and affiliated organizations control all 
amateur athletic events of any importance 
in the United States. An amateur may 
not compete for money or against professionals who 
receive money; he is likewise disqualified if he pawns 
or sells any prize obtained in an athletic contest. 


Broadly speaking, the term tfjjk 

athletics includes all sports and 
pastimes which involve an ele- " 

ment of physical effort. Usu¬ 
ally, however, a distinction is 
made between athletics and 
gymnastics, the latter term be¬ 
ing applied to purely muscular 
exercises in a gymnasium. The 
most popular athletic sports 
are baseball, football, basket¬ 
ball, hockey, tennis, and a 
variety of outdoor contests 
commonly grouped as track 
and field events, which include running, jumping, 
hurdle-racing, pole-vaulting, putting the shot, throw¬ 
ing the hammer and the discus. Swimming and 
rowing are important sports in many colleges and 
amateur associations. Handball and squash are 
favorites in athletic clubs, 
and amateur boxing, wrest¬ 
ling, and fencing are becom¬ 
ing more popular everywhere. 
The so-called “major 
sports,” such as football, 
baseball, etc., are played in 
virtually all schools and col¬ 
leges in the United States. 
These and the other import¬ 
ant games and contests are 
described in separate articles. 

The world’s most import¬ 
ant athletic contests are the 
Olympic Games. These were 
revived in 1896 to foster the 
ideal of “a sound mind in a sound body,” and to pro¬ 
mote international friendship, as the former Olympic 
Games had done in the an¬ 
cient Greek world (see Olym¬ 
pic Games). With the excep¬ 
tion of the period of the 
World War, these events 
have been held at four-year 
intervals since 1896, always 
in some world-capital. Teams 
of picked athletes are sent 
from the United 
States, Canada, 

Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and 
most of the nations of Europe. More than 
30 different branches of athletics are repre¬ 
sented, including track and field events, 
rowing, swimming, trap shooting, rifle 
shooting, pistol and revolver shooting, 
figure skating, hockey, and tennis. Women 
take part in several of the events. In track 
and field events the representatives of the 
United States have carried off the lion’s share of the 
honors. (See also Physical Training, and the separate 
articles on each of the chief sports.) 








For any eubject not found in its alphabetical place tee information 

252 














1 


LITTLE, TALKS 
ON GREAT THINGS 

Ay^STrtl) ur7yfe& 




THE HONOR OF THE PLAYING FIELD 


ANY of the great lessons of life come 
from the games we play in youth. 

The great healthful games are 
those played out-of-doors. “Seek 
first the Kingdom of Out-of-Doors/’ the phil¬ 
osophy of games seems to say, “and you will 
find health and pleasure there.” In the play¬ 
ing field and on the river we should seek, and 
we may find, a strong arm, a sure aim, a steady 
eye, and dignity of bearing. One of the first 
rules of games is to lay the foundation of a full 
and splendid manhood, and we should keep, as 
one of the mottoes of our outdoor life, the 
thought that a noble mind should live in a 
noble body. 

We should play a game for its own sake, 
never spoiling the spirit of all true games, or 
lowering the dignity of all true manhood, by 
playing it for profit, at the expense of some¬ 
body else. If a game is not interesting enough 
in itself we should leave it alone. We should 
scorn to break the great rule of Fair Play by 
playing for a baser motive than the pure love 
of the game. 

Play the game for the game, and for nothing 
hut the game. 

Our games are our own lessons in noble things. 
The playing field is in truth the High School 
of life. It is there we find the great distinctive 
qualities that mark the men of the English- 
speaking race all over the world. No American 
boy can be healthy and whole and miss the 
laws of honor. They ring through every school 
that is worth the stuff it is built of; they are 
blazoned as in letters of fire over every playing 
field worth walking on. They are among the 
oldest things in the world, and they will last as 
long as the human race. Even in olden days 
when men’s sense of honor was curiously 
twisted, so that only a duel could satisfy it, a 
man would not take a mean advantage of the 
enemy he was about to kill, but would measure 
swords with him to see that the chances were 
equal and the fight was fair. And always at 
the bottom of all true ideas of sport, however 
men may forget it, is the great maxim, “A fair 
field and no favor.” 

We must think of the game and not of our¬ 
selves. That game is lost in which one mem¬ 
ber of the team seeks his own glory. The unity 
of all for a single cause, each playing his part 
for the general end, is the condition without 


which no game is won. Chivalry, the sur¬ 
render of self, obedience to the law that holds 
the team together—these things grow natural¬ 
ly with every game we play, and we should 
cherish them as a part of ourselves. We should 
be staunch and loyal and true; our comrades 
must be able to rely on us. 

Especially we should be good losers; we 
should yield the palm with grace and cheerful¬ 
ness to a victor who has played the game, 
leaving haggling, grudging, and quarreling to 
meaner souls, and not spoiling the temper of a 
game by claiming doubtful points or insisting 
on little rights. We must not strain the rules 
of a game so that the keeping of them breaks 
the spirit of them; we should be willing rather 
to lose a thousand games than win one by the 
shadow of unfairness. When the time comes, 
as it comes in all games, when nobody could 
see if your play were unfair, you will be glad to 
know that your loyalty is above suspicion, and 
will do the right thing as quickly as a light¬ 
ning flash. 

The sad side of human life, made up of cun¬ 
ning and intrigue, of seeking selfish ends at 
any cost to others, of preferring our vainglory 
rather than the achievement of a common 
good, of shutting our hearts to the troubles of 
others so long as we are prospering has no en¬ 
couragement on the playing field, where only 
the flower of life, and not the weed, can grow. 
We must be loyal, or the game is lost. We 
could never be mean enough to withhold the 
applause that belongs rightly to the victor. 

So that there grows up in us in our play 
that part of our life which makes the differ¬ 
ence, as the years go by, between the men who 
help a nation on and the men who pull it back. 
The life of the world itself calls for those 
qualities in us which spring from the holding 
together of the team. If we hold together in 
the nation as we hold together in the team, in 
the boat race, in the tug-of-war, we shall give 
back to the nation a hundredfold the talents 
entrusted to us. If we are loyal to our team, 
to our school, we shall be loyal to our town and 
to our country; the very beginnings of patriot¬ 
ism lie in our games. 

And now put down this book and go to your 
games. They will give you strength and cour¬ 
age; they will bring you selflessness and manli¬ 
ness. Play them well, and win. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-I ndex at the end of t his work 

253 















































ATLANTA 


ATLANTIC OCEAN 



ATLANTA, Ga. Its rapid growth since the Civil 
War has made Atlanta, the capital and largest city of 
Georgia, one of the most important industrial and 
commercial centers of the South. It is in the north- 
central part of the state, about seven miles from the 
Chattahoochee River, near the foothills of the Blue 
Ridge Mountains. More than a dozen radiating rail¬ 
way lines make Atlanta the chief distributing center 
of the southeast, and it has a very extensive export 
trade in cotton, tobacco, grain, horses, and mules. 
Atlanta is also the financial center of the southeast, 
being the reserve city for Federal Reserve Bank Dis¬ 
trict No. 6, which includes Alabama, Georgia, Florida, 
and parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 

Large and varied manufacturing interests also 
center in Atlanta, the most important products being 
cotton goods, fertilizers, engines, car-wheels, machin¬ 
ery, lumber, sheet-metal work, terra cotta, bricks, 
wagons, furniture, cotton-seed oil, etc. Hydroelec¬ 
tric power for lighting, operating street-car lines, and 
manufacturing purposes is obtained from large water 
power developments in the mountains of north 
Georgia. Atlanta is the most important southern 
city for the publication of newspapers and periodicals, 
and also holds a high rank as an educational center. 
Some of its many schools and colleges are Georgia 
School of Technology, Emory and Oglethorpe uni¬ 
versities for boys, and Agnes Scott and Cox colleges 
for girls. 

Atlanta’s altitude of 1,100 feet gives it an equable 
and invigorating climate, cooler than its latitude 
would indicate. The city has several beautiful parks, 
and near it are Camp Gordon and Jessup and old Fort 
McPherson, now used as an army hospital. 

Atlanta was founded in 1837 as Marthasville. It 
became the terminus of the Savannah and Macon 
railway, and as one railroad after another extended 
its lines to the city, it was known as “Terminus”; 
later the name was changed to Atlanta. During the 
Civil War Atlanta was a depot of Confederate mili¬ 
tary supplies, and on this account was the object of 
a Federal attack which captured the city in 1864. 
All citizens were ordered to leave the city, and when 
Sherman started on his march “to the sea,” a great 
part of it was burned by his order (Nov. 17, 1864). 
In describing Atlanta, Sherman held up his open 
hand and pointing to the wrist said, “ Here is Atlanta 
and here at the fingers’ ends are Charleston, Savan¬ 
nah, Jacksonville, Mobile, and New Orleans. At¬ 
lanta will always be the strategic city of the South.” 

Following the Civil War the city was rebuilt, and 
its growth since has been rapid. During the Recon¬ 
struction period the legislature was moved from 
Milledgeville to Atlanta, and the city became the 
permanent capital of the state by popular vote in 
1887. Population, about 200,000. 

Atlantic city, N. J. The fine bathing beach, 
many luxurious hotels, numerous shops, and places of 
amusement, together with the famous “board walk” 
which stretches along the beach for about five miles, 



make Atlantic City exceedingly attractive to visitors. 
It is the largest and most popular all-the-year-round 
seaside resort in the United States, and is also a great 
convention city for organizations of all kinds. It lies 
58 miles southeast of Philadelphia, has several sea¬ 
side sanitariums and hospitals, and a busy resident 
population. Fishing and oyster-dredging are among 
the occupations. Population, about 52,000. 

ATLANTIC OCEAN. To our distant ancestors the 
Atlantic Ocean seemed an illimitable expanse of water, 
as terrifying as it was vast, but today it furnishes us 
with a great highway of traffic, on the whole safer and 
cheaper than any railroad. Across it ply the great 
freight and passenger liners which form a veritable 
bridge of ships between the Old World and the New, 
while the wireless and the submarine cable afford a 
means of almost instant communication from one side 
to the other. Even airplanes have mastered this 
great barrier. 

Of the three great oceans of the world, the Atlantic 
is first in commercial importance and second in size. 
It considerably exceeds the Indian Ocean in area, but 
it is only about half as large as the Pacific. 

If by some means the water could be drawn off from 
the Atlantic basin, we should see a broad undulating 
plain, broken here and there by volcanic peaks, 
mountain ranges, and plateaus. On the whole the 
appearance of the floor of the Atlantic would be much 
smoother than the continent of America. On the 
average the ocean is between two and three miles 
deep, but near Porto Rico a sounding of 27,360 feet 
(more than five miles) has been made. 

The Great Mountain Ranges under the Sea 

A striking feature of the Atlantic floor is an 
S-shaped ridge running from north to south through¬ 
out very nearly its entire length. The ocean depth 
above this ridge averages from 9,000 to 10,000 feet, 
but on each side the floor of the Atlantic sinks into 
valleys 15,000 to 17,000 feet below the surface. The 
highest peaks of this submarine mountain range pro¬ 
ject above the water, forming the islands of the 
Azores group as well as St. Paul, Ascension, and 
Tristan da Cunha. 

In the history of submarine cables, the Telegraph 
Plateau, lying between Newfoundland and Ireland, 
will always occupy an important place, for without 
this comparatively shallow bottom the laying of the 
first ocean cables would have been almost impossible. 
About 15 cables now cross the Atlantic. In the in¬ 
termediate depths—that is from 500 to 1,500 feet— 
the Atlantic Ocean floor consists of a slimy ooze made 
up chiefly of the shells of millions of creatures which 
for ages have lived and died in those waters. At 
greater depths the bottom is composed of a kind of 
red clay showing the presence of meteoric iron. 

Food fishes are abundant in all parts of the Atlantic, 
while near the surface live many varieties of sea mam¬ 
mals, of which the whale and the seal are conspicuous 
examples. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

254 









How Winds Make Ocean Currents 



ATLANTIC OCEAN 


LINKS THAT BIND THE ATLANTIC WORLD TOGETHER 



LONDON 


-* • 'GfiCAT BANK OF^P^w* —I 

.. NeWFOUbtOiAND'-^n 


Gibraltar 


MADEIRA IS. 


/CANARY js. 

• > ** ’*•+ ' 


MCMtrtl ^AMERICAN OEPTTi 


\$> Sai/ship 


New York 


•■sir ' 








nk v a i h\ \ .* v 

V 5 . 1 T.V\<5,\ 


I I I ^"-1 A V%~ i. / 

K>: / \7 \ i /\ w«Mp 


_ Steamer Routes 

- Sails b Ip Routes 

_ Cables 




Every day is a busy day on the great Atlantic. Can you doubt it, looking at that web of throbbing cables and traffic lanes? How vividly 
the importance of these most traveled ocean waterways is brought home to us by the lines showing the routes of steamships and sailing 
vessels and the cables of the ocean beds! The arrows indicate the direction of the ocean currents. The spot marked “North American 
Depth” off the West Indies is the deepest known place in the Atlantic, more than five miles deep. 


The Atlantic has several currents, both warm and 
cold, chiefly caused by the trade winds. Along the 
Equator from Africa to South America the waters 
move westward. In the neighborhood of Brazil they 
divide, one current proceeding into the Gulf of Mexico 
and thence northward forming the Gulf Stream, while 
the other turns to the south and circles back towards 
the African coast. The famous Gulf Stream, carrying 
the warm waters of the tropics, not only softens'the 
rigors of the New England climate, but also exercises 
a moderating influence in countries as far distant as 


the Scandinavian peninsula, which otherwise might 
be quite uninhabitable. The Labrador current, on 
the other hand, is a cold stream from the Arctic 
regions which carries into the Atlantic the icebergs 
which sometimes menace ocean travel. 

There are no uniformly accepted limits for the 
Atlantic Ocean, but if we take the Arctic and Antarctic 
circles as the north and south boundaries, the length 
is about 9,000 miles. On this basis the total surface 
area would be about 34,000,000 square miles, or more 
than twice the area of North and South America. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


255 


















ATLANTIC OCEAN 


&V ATOMS AND ELECTRONS 


# 


At its greatest width, between the Gulf of Mexico and 
the coast of Africa, the Atlantic stretches for about 
4,500 miles. At its narrowest, between Cape St. 
Roque in Brazil and Cape Palmas in Africa, it has a 
width of approximately 1,600 miles. It is estimated 
that the yearly discharge of rivers into the Atlantic 
is 3,400 cubic miles of water, equal to about one-half 
of the river discharge of the world. 


The Atlantic Ocean may have been named from Mt. 
Atlas, but more probably from the fabled island of “Atlantis” 
described by Plato. According to his description, Atlantis 
was originally larger than Asia Minor and Libya taken 
together and was situated outside the Pillars of Hercules 
(Gibraltar). The inhabitants had built up a great state, 
having conquered all the Mediterranean peoples except the 
Athenians, but their ambitions were suddenly brought to 
an end by a catastrophe in which their island was swallowed 
up by the sea. (See Ocean.) 


The LATEST ANSWER to the OLD QUESTION, 
“WHAT IS MATTER ?” 


A toms and elec¬ 
trons. The astron¬ 
omer tells us that the 
heavens contain stars or 
suns which are so far away 
that it takes hundreds and 
even thousands of years for the light to reach us from 
these stars, and all the time the light is traveling at 
the enormous velocity of 186,000 miles per second, 
or over five trillion miles per year! Also, some of 
these stars are so large that our own earth is a mere 
speck compared to them. From astronomy we learn 
of the infinitely big, of distances and of bodies so 
enormously great that the immensity of them over¬ 
whelms us. 

On the other side, the student of physics and chem¬ 
istry tells us of the infinitely small—that is, of mole¬ 
cules, atoms, and electrons. We learn that a body 
is made up of “molecules,” and the chemist has 
shown that molecules are made up of still smaller 
bodies called “atoms,” and that there are about 90 
kinds of atoms or “elements.” That is, all the vari¬ 
ous kinds of matter in the world consist of chemical 
combinations of these 90 kinds of atoms. Thus the 
water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms com¬ 
bined with one oxygen atom. 

An atom is inconceivably small. If 50 million 
hydrogen atoms were put in a row, the row would be 
only one inch long. To fill a cubic inch on this basis, 
it would take over 1,200 billion billion atoms. Can 
you think of anything as small as that? 

And an Electron is Smaller Still! 

For many years the atom was thought to be the 
limit of smallness; indeed the word “atom” is made up 
from Greek words which mean something that can¬ 
not be cut in two. But in 1897 Sir J. J. Thomson of 
Cambridge University, England, showed that there 
are bodies still smaller than atoms, which are obtained 
by breaking up the atom in the high vacuum tube 
called the Crookes tube. These parts of atoms are 
now called “electrons.” Professor Thomson first 
studied electrons in the cathode rays of the Crookes 
tube; but electrons are found in various ways, as in 
the discharge from a hot metal wire, and from radium 
and similar substances. 

The electron is infinitesimal in size compared with 
the atom; and while it is quite dense, it weighs only a 


small fraction compared 
to the lightest atom. Of 
course such infinitesimal 
bodies are not weighed by 
balances, and are not 
measured by scales, and 
not even by microscopes; but they are weighed and 
measured with high exactness by methods described 
in advanced physics. 

The striking fact about electrons is that each elec¬ 
tron carries the same definite charge of electricity, and 
indeed the electron is simply an “atom” of negative 
electricity. These electrons revolve in the material 
atom about a positively charged center or nucleus, 
often called the “positive electron.” Indeed, our best 
idea of the atom is that it consists of this positive 
center about which one or more electrons revolve like 
a moon around the earth. The kind of atom is fixed 
by the number of electrons that it has. Thus an atom 
with one electron is hydrogen, while an atom with six 
electrons is carbon. 

Now we have the latest answer to the very old 
question, “What is matter?” or put in other words, 
“What are bodies really made of?” Matter is finally 
made of electrons, that is of electricity, and it is electric 
orces that we have called 11 chemical affinity” and that 
hold bodies together (see Electricity for illustration). 
This “electron theory” of matter is held in some form 
by all scientific men today; it is one of the marvelous 
results of recent science. 

The Electrons and the Dreams of the Alchemists 

But if all matter is made up of the same kind of 
substance, why cannot men change one kind of matter 
into another kind of matter? Why for instance 
cannot we change lead into gold? That is what cer¬ 
tain men in the Middle Ages, the “alchemists,” tried 
to do. Now, strangest of all strange things, it is 
found that one substance, radium, is changing of 
itself into another substance. The radium atom has 
the remarkable property that it loses electrons and in 
doing so gradually changes into another kind of mat¬ 
ter. So far these changes—of one kind of matter into 
another kind of matter—are known to take place in 
only two or three cases, and these cannot be stopped 
or hurried by man. But scientists are wondering 
whether it is not possible to add or subtract electrons 
from atoms, and thus change at will one kind of 


TJ/'HAT science tells us of the invisible units out 
'' of which everything is made, and the new 
theory that the least of these — Electrons—are merely 
tiny charges of Electricity. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

256 








AUDION 


AUGUSTUS 


matter into another kind. If we could, then the 
dream of the alchemists and many even more re¬ 
markable things might be brought about. 

The story of the infinitesimally small bodies, atoms 
and electrons with their marvelous activities, sounds 
almost like a fairy tale, but the wonderful thing is that 
we seem to be just at the beginning of these dis¬ 
coveries. Do you wonder that men who devote their 
lives to experiments in physics and chemistry are 
fascinated with their subject? 

AUDION ( a'di-dn ). The electronic vacuum valve 
or “audion” is an important device used in wireless 
telegraphy and wireless telephony, and in long 
distance land telephony. It is an exhausted glass 
bulb that looks to the layman like an incandescent 
electric lamp. Inside the bulb there are, first, a 
tungsten wire filament that can be heated to incan¬ 
descence by an electric battery; second, a “grid” of 
fine wires wound on a glass frame; and third, a metal 
plate. Besides the terminals for the heating battery, 
there are three exterior terminals, one to the plate, 
one to the grid, and one to the positive end of the 
tungsten filament. (For picture see Wireless Telegraph 
and Telephone.) 

The action depends upon the fact that the hot 
filament gives off negative electricity very readily, 
but not positive electricity, so that a negative electric 
current flows quite easily across the vacuum space 
between the filament and the plate, but a positive 
current cannot flow. The electric connection with 
the grid also serves to regulate the amount of the 
current between the filament and the plate. Thus 
the vacuum tube acts like a one-way valve, allowing 
electric currents in one direction to pass but stopping 
currents in the opposite direction, and also regulating 
the amount of the current that passes. 

By this instrument, wireless telegraph currents, 
which are alternating currents reversing themselves 
many thousands of times per second, can be changed 
or “rectified” to one-way pulses. Groups of these 
“rectified” pulses can be heard as “clicks” for dot- 
and-dash signals in an ordinary telephone receiver. 
The electron valve tube, in some form, is now the 
most used receiver of wireless signals. The three- 
electrode vacuum tube, or “audion” as it is sometimes 
called, can also be used as a perfect relay of oscillating 
electric currents—that is, it can be used to reproduce 
and magnify feeble currents without distortion and 
without time delay. 

This quality of the audion has been found inval¬ 
uable in long distance telephony. To telephone from 
New York to San Francisco, with ordinary instru¬ 
ments and with copper wires of reasonable sizes, 
would be impossible; but by using audions as relays 
the feeble currents produced by the voice in the 
telephone can be repeated and magnified at relay 
stations along the line. The invention of the audion 
has thus made possible long distance telephony. 

The audion is also used to produce uniform and 
continuous oscillations of any frequency, which are 


necessary for wireless telephony. Wireless telephony 
from airplanes, used so efficiently in the World War, 
employed audions both in the transmitter and in the 
receiver. The audion was first used by Prof. J. A. 
Fleming in 1904. The three-electrode tube or 
audion was invented by Lee DeForest, and has been 
improved by several inventors. 

AUGUST. The month of August, the eighth in our 
calendar, was originally called “Sextilis” by the 
Romans because it was the sixth month (beginning 
with March). The Emperor Augustus renamed the 
month in his own honor because several of his victories 
and other fortunate events had occurred in it. He 
also increased its length from 30 days to 31, so as to 
make it equal to July, named in honor of Julius 
Caesar. 

Augustus, Emperor of Rome (31 b.c.-14 a.d.). 
The dagger blows which brought the career of Julius 
Caesar to an untimely end interrupted in mid-course 
that great dictator’s plans 
for a far-reaching reforma¬ 
tion of the corrupt Roman 
republic. The republic was 
already dead in fact, though 
not in name. So the assas¬ 
sins who struck down the 
dictator in the name of 
the republic plunged Rome 
into chaos, anarchy, and 
civil war, which lasted until 
another appeared who could 
carry on the work that 
Caesar had begun. The new savior of Rome was the 
dead dictator’s great-nephew Octavian. He was later 
called “Augustus’’ (venerable) by the grateful senate, 
in recognition of his services. 

The Debt of Civilization to Augustus 

To the Emperor Augustus the world owes the 
reorganization of the Roman state on a strong basis, 
enabling it to live on for several centuries and to ac¬ 
complish its great work of transmitting to nations 
then unborn the civilization of classical times. To 
Augustus we owe the fact that our language and the 
languages of most of Europe are shot through with 
Latin words, just as our ideas, our habits, and our 
institutions are largely outgrowths of the old Roman 
culture. 

When Caesar was murdered in 44 b.c., Octavian 
was a youth of 18, quietly pursuing his studies in 
Illyricum across the Adriatic Sea. A letter from his 
mother warned him to flee eastward to escape danger 
at the hands of his uncle’s murderers. His reply was 
to proceed at once to Rome, where he assumed the 
name Julius Caesar Octavianus. His claim to succeed 
to his uncle’s position was strengthened by the fact 
that he had been legally adopted by Caesar as his 
sole heir, and that a force of Caesar’s veterans rallied 
to his support. 

With this backing Octavian was able to force Mark 



AUGUSTUS CAESAR 
Emperor of Rome 


contained in the Ea,y Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


257 








AUGUSTUS 


AUK 



Antony and Lepidus, the two chief rivals for the 
mantle of Caesar, to come to terms with him. The 
powerful trio formed a triumvirate, or three-man 
alliance, which overthrew the republican forces at 
Philippi (42 b.c.), and divided the Homan world 
among themselves. Lepidus was soon stripped of his 
power, and Antony and Octavian were left to share 
supreme control—the former over the eastern 
provinces, the latter over Italy and the West. 

But Antony neglected his provinces and spent his 
time in dalliance at the court of Cleopatra, the 
Egyptian queen, whose charms “age could not wither, 
nor custom stale.” Octavian seized this opportunity 
to make himself sole master. He induced the senate 
to make war against Egypt, and advanced against 
Antony. The forces met at Actium on the west 
coast of Greece in 31 b.c. Antony was defeated and 
committeed suicide, and Cleopatra followed his 
example (see Antony, Mark; Cleopatra). 

At the Head of a World Empire 

Octavian had now reached the goal of his ambitions. 
He was undisputed master of all the far-reaching 
domains of Rome. For the first time for 200 years, 
Rome was at peace; and Octavian was free to devise 
new methods for administering her vast possessions. 
All hope of restoring the 
reality of a republic was 
vain. The young ruler’s 
task was to find a workable 
compromise between the 
old republican forms and 
the new condition of one- 
man rule. Henceforward 
he wielded his vast powers 
under the title of princeps 
(the “first citizen”) and 
imperator (commander-in¬ 
chief), being invested by 
senate and people with 
certain additional powers 
attaching to the old mag¬ 
istracies. Though repub¬ 
lican institutions were 
nominally preserved, the 
transition to the empire 
had actually been accom¬ 
plished. 

What He Did for Rome 

The rest of the em¬ 
peror’s life was devoted 
to consolidating the prov¬ 
inces of Rome and reform¬ 
ing their administration, 
and to vain attempts to 
correct the evils which 
had undermined the sturdy 
virtues of the Romans and unfitted them for self- 
government. He built temples, encouraged religion, 
passed stringent marriage laws, and gave Rome for the 
first time organized police, fire, and water departments. 


Augustus did so much to beautify Rome that it 
was said of him: “He found the city built of brick 
and left it built of marble.” He established libraries 
and encouraged learning, especially the culture intro¬ 
duced from Greece. Some of the greatest names in 
Latin literature belong to his reign—the poets Vergil 
and Horace, the h : storian Livy, and others of less 
renown. So celebrated was this period that the term 
“Augustan Age” has come to be applied in the history 
of other nations to periods of great literary achieve¬ 
ment. It was during this time that Jesus Christ was 
born. 

After more than 40 years of peaceful rule (27 b.c.- 
14 a.d.), during which Rome enjoyed one of the 
greatest and most prosperous epochs in her history, 
Augustus died, leaving his stepson Tiberius to succeed 
him. 

AUK ( ak ). Two centuries ago the great auk was 
found by the millions on the rocky shores and islands 
of northern Europe and North America. Today there 
is not a living specimen in existence, and there is no 
record of one’s having been seen since the year 1844. 
Even mounted birds are very rare, there being but 
about 80 specimens of this once numerous family dis¬ 
tributed among the museums of the world. 

This bird has disap¬ 
peared because, although 
so alert and swift moving 
when in the water, it was 
stupid and clumsy on land. 
The great auk could 
neither fly nor run and 
was easily killed with a 
club. Its eggs and flesh 
were good for food and its 
feathered skin was of value 
to both savage and civil¬ 
ized man. So, when the 
auk came to shore for its 
nesting season, hunters 
and sailors ruthlessly 
killed it by the thousands; 
for the auk nested in col¬ 
onies, the birds standing 
over their one egg, side 
by side, within touching 
distance of each other. 

The great auk was a 
strange looking creature. 
It had a thick goose-like 
body about two feet long, 
with legs set so far apart 
that, when walking, it 
stood quite upright, like 
a man, but its legs were 
so short that the great 
webbed feet seemed attached directly to the body. 
It had a feathered coat of black with a vest of 
white, and its black wings, folded against the white 
vest, looked like small arms. 


THE AUK WITH THE JAUNTY CREST 



Go up into Alaska and in some places you will see the waters, the 
air, and the lofty cliffs fairly alive with these crested auks. The two 
birds in the foreground are male and female, but the two sexes are 
alike in plumage, which is comparatively rare in the feathered tribes. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

258 






AURORA 



AURORA BOREALIS 



THE GREAT AUK Besides the great 

auk (Plautus impennis) 
there are about 30 
other species in the 
auk family, all of 
which are still found 
in northern waters. 
Among these are the 
crested auklet of the 

Pacific, which some¬ 

times ventures as far 
south as Japan; and 
the razor-billed auk, 
which is sometimes 

found on the shores 
of Long Island. The 
same family includes 
the queer-looking puf¬ 
fins of the northern 
Pacific coasts and the 
murres, which are often 
This is the Great Auk who, like the great seen in California and 

Julius Caesar, lives only in memory, which nest in great 

This drawing was made for this work by _ nloT ,:__ on Three 
Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, the distinguished colonies on tne inree 
naturalist, from a mounted specimen. Rocks Reservation oft 

the coast of Oregon. 
The auk family ( Alcidae ) belongs to the order of diving birds 
( Pygopodes ), which also includes the grebes and loons. 


AURORA. Every morning Aurora, the goddess of 
the dawn (called Eos by the Greeks), drew back with 


her, Aurora begged the gods to allow him to live for¬ 
ever. Her prayer was granted. But alas! she forgot 
to ask that he might stay immortally young. So, as 
the years passed, Tithonus grew older and older. He 
shrivelled and shrank and grew feeble and shrill¬ 
voiced, until at last Aurora could no longer endure to 
look upon the husk of the man she had loved, and 
she changed him into a grasshopper. 

Aurora BOREALIS. In the northern part of 
America and Europe, during both warm and cold 
weather, long quivering streamers of light are often 
seen in the sky. Usually they seem to radiate from 
an arc, and to send their rays far across the heavens. 
These bands of light are known as the aurora borealis 
or “ northern lights.” They are most often white, but 
sometimes they are red, green, or yellowish in color. 
These luminous bands may be almost straight, or they 
may wind back and forth in serpentine formation. 
Sometimes the rays resemble a fan, or form a crown of 
light about a dark center; or again long beams of light 
appear to fall downward like the folds of a curtain. 

The aurora borealis is most frequently seen between 
65 degrees and 80 degrees northern latitude. The 
area of visibility extends farther south in North 


WHAT DAYBREAK MEANT TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS 



)n the ceiling of the summer house of the Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, Guido Reni painted this fresco to express tne conception oi aawn 
i the classic mythology. It represents Aurora scattering flowers before Apollo’s chariot, while the Hours advance in rapid motion. 


rosy fingers the veil of night and heralded the coming 
of the sun. Wrapping round her the rich folds of her 
saffron-hued mantle, she sped across the heavens in 
her glorious chariot, or was borne aloft by her own 
fleet wings that glowed with ever-changing colors as 
she moved. 

One morning, according to the Greek legend, as 
Aurora looked down upon the world of mortals awak¬ 
ening to welcome the glowing dawn, she beheld the 
fair youth Tithonus, and his beauty won her heart. 
She bore him away to her bright dwelling-place at the 
edge of the world, and there they were wedded. 
Dreading the time when death must take him from 


American than in Europe. Scientists believe that the 
rays are due to discharges of electricity in the rare 
upper atmosphere, and that they travel along lines of 
magnetic force which point toward the magnetic 
North Pole. This theory seems more reasonable than 
the theory that the aurora is due to reflection of sun¬ 
light on ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The 
colors are different from those in sunlight and have 
a closer relation to certain substances found in the 
upper air. The far-reaching magnetic disturbances 
which frequently accompany the brilliant auroral dis¬ 
plays of the northern and southern hemispheres also 
bear out the electrical theory. 


contained in t h < 


Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

259 











DOES THE SUN ALSO FURNISH THE NORTHERN LIGHTS? 



It is still the “open season” for theories about the cause of the Northern Lights. One of the most interesting of these theories is strikingly 
expressed in this picture which shows how discharges of electricity are supposed to stream out from the Sun and then on reaching the upper 
layers of our atmosphere are turned aside to the North and South magnetic poles, where, according to this theory, they produce the 
Northern and Southern Lights in their various picturesque forms. These usually appear as long quivering streamers of white light radiating 
from an arc, though there are many different forms and colors. The rays often seem to move up and down so suddenly that they have 

been called the “Merry Dancers.” 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical 


260 


place 


see information 





AUSTRALIA 



1 AUSTIN 

Austin, Stephen Fuller (1793-1836). Although 
the name of General Sam Houston is the one most 
frequently associated with the early history of Texas, 
it was Stephen F. Austin who was styled by the 
government of the state “the Father of Texas.” 
Houston commanded the forces which won indepen¬ 
dence from Mexico, but Austin by leading American 
colonists ip to Texas had supplied the men who fought 
under Houston. 

The attention of Austin’s father, a Connecticut 
Yankee who had settled in Virginia, was early at¬ 
tracted to the possibilities of Texas as a field for 
American colonization, and he had secured from the 
Mexican government permission to bring colonists 
into that region. But he had died before the work 
could be completed, and his son—a graduate of 
Transylvania University (Kentucky) and a resident 
first of Missouri and then of Arkansas—took up the 
unfinished task. After surmounting innumerable dif¬ 
ficulties Stephen Austin, in the summer of 1823, 
established a colony of several hundred American 
families at San Felipe on the Brazos River in South¬ 
eastern Texas. 

Other Americans soon followed the example of 
Austin and his colonists, and Texas became filled with 
American settlers. Alarmed at this large immigra¬ 
tion, the Mexican government passed laws to check 
it and to keep the control of affairs in its own hands. 
Texans felt these laws to be oppressive, and in 1833 
they sent Austin to Mexico City to ask that Texas 


might be made into a separate province with local 
self-government. 

When Austin failed to secure an answer to his 
request he wrote home advising Texans to establish a 
constitution on their own account. Unfortunately 
the letter fell into the hands of the Mexican govern¬ 
ment. Austin was arrested and kept in prison for two 
years. When finally he was released and returned 
home in 1835, he advised the Texans to prepare for 
war, saying: “ War is our only recourse. There is no 
other. We must defend our rights, ourselves, and our 
country by force of arms.” 

At first Austin was commander-in-chief of the 
Texan forces, but his health was in no condition for 
active campaigning. Furthermore he was the ablest 
statesman and the best educated man in Texas, and 
so could be of more use in the United States raising 
money and securing arms. 

In the first election of the Texan republic, held in 
September 1836, the unassuming Austin was badly 
defeated for president by the brilliant general Sam 
Houston. To conciliate Austin’s friends, Houston 
appointed him secretary of state; but Austin’s health 
had been ruined by his work for Texas, and he died 
before its independence was firmly established. 
When, in 1837, the site of the present capital of Texas 
was incorporated, it was renamed “Austin City” in 
honor of this statesman, and two years later it was 
chosen as the seat of government of the state. (See 
Texas.) 


The 

A ustralia. Remote 
from all other lands, 
the vast island-continent 
of Australia is like a 
world unto itself. Even 
New Zealand, which we 
think of as its neighbor, 
is a four days’ voyage 
away, while the distance 
to India is almost as 
great as from New York 
to Liverpool. Though it 
was the last of the conti¬ 
nents to be discovered 
and opened to civilization, it is the most ancient of 
them all—so ancient that its mountain peaks have 
been worn down by the waters and winds of countless 
ages to mere blunt stumps. 

A Museum of Living Fossils 
While most of Asia and Europe were still submerged 
beneath the ocean, Australia was dry land. Scien¬ 
tists tell us that it was once connected by a land 
bridge with Asia, and some believe with South Amer¬ 
ica also. This bridge disappeared beneath the surface 
of the ocean in ages inconceivably remote, before the 
higher forms of animal and plant life had come into 

contained in the Eaty Reference 


Age of civilization, no 
farther advanced than were the peoples of Europe more 
than 5,000 years ago. Yet ancient and remote as Aus¬ 
tralia is, new life has entered it and made it in some 
respects the most modern country of the world. 
Today we hear much of Australia as the seat of the 
most advanced of governments, and the traveler’s first 
impression as he lands at Sydney, or one of the other 
fine ports, is that of a busy, prosperous, progressive 
country. 

This loneliest of the continents is also the most 
extraordinary in its physical characteristics. With 
all its vast area, almost equal to that of the United 

Fact-Index at the end of t hit work 
261 


ISLAND-CONTINENT of AUSTRALIA 


Extent. —Greatest length east to west, 2,400 miles; north to south, 
2,000 miles. Area (including Tasmania), 2,974,581 square miles. 
Population, about 5,500,000. 

Distance from Other Points. —From New Zealand, 1,200 miles; Japan, 
3,000 miles; India, 2,500 miles; South America, 6,300 miles; San 
Francisco, 6,750 miles; London, 11,000 miles via Suez, 12,750 via 
Panama Canal. 

Natural Features. —Surface, flat and largely desert except in east 
and southeast. Mountains: Great Dividing Range, known at 
various points as the Australian Alps, the Blue Mountains, the Liver¬ 
pool Mountains, etc.; highest peak, Mt. Kosciusko (7,328 feet). 
Rivers: Murray, Darling, Hunter, Clarence, Brisbane, Fitzroy, 
Burdekin, Swan, Murchison, Gascoyne, Victoria, Flinders. 

Products and Industries. —Wool, frozen meats, hides, and tallow; 
wheat, hay, oats, barley, corn, potatoes, dairy products, sugar 
cane, grapes; gold, silver, tin, lead, coal, iron, etc.; timber. Tex¬ 
tiles and clothing manufactures; smelting, metal working, flour 
milling, sugar refining. 

States of the Commonwealth (with Capitals). —New South Wales 
(Sydney); Victoria (Melbourne); South Australia (Adelaide); 
Queensland (Brisbane); Tasmania (Hobart); Western Australia 
(Perth). 


existence. Isolated thus 
through succeeding ages, 
this unique land has gone 
its solitary way, preserv¬ 
ing for us, as if in a vast 
museum, forms of trees, 
flowers, and animals that 
have long since vanished 
from other parts of the 
earth. 

The natives or “black- 
fellows” are very largely 
savages still in the Stone 








AUSTRALIA 


The Deserts and the Rains 



States without Alaska, its coast is so little indented 
that it has less than 9,000 miles of coast line, being 
only three-fourths as long as Norway’s. Along the 
northeast coast stretches for 1,200 miles the Great 
Barrier Reef, the 
greatest of all coral 
reefs, offering few 
safe openings for 
ships. There are, 
however, numer¬ 
ous spacious har¬ 
bors along the 
southeastern 
coast. Many 
small islets dot 
the coast line, but 
the only nearby 
islands of import¬ 
ance are T asmania, 
which forms one 
of the states of the 
commonwealth, 
and New Guinea 
or Papua, the 
British portion of 
which is now prac¬ 
tically a depend¬ 
ency of Australia 
(see New Guinea). 

Except for low 
wide ranges of mountains along the eastern and 
southeastern coasts, Australia is a great flat low¬ 
land, with only a few isolated groups of hills to 
diversify it. These Eastern Mountains, or the 
Dividing Range as they are usually called, intercept 
nearly all the moisture of the southeasterly trade 
winds, so that the rainfall on the 
eastern coast is abundant. Here are 
fertile agricultural areas, where grow 
most of the products of the temperate 
zone in the center and south, and 
tropical products in the north. Inland 
from the mountains the rainfall be¬ 
comes scantier and scantier. Little 
but grass grows in this region, but it 
is a great grazing district where the 
sheep are pastured that make Australia 
the chief mutton and wool producing 
country in the world. 

The Dreary Stretch of Rainless Desert 

West of the grazing areas comes the 
huge expanse ot desert that covers 
nearly all the rest of the continent. 

More than half of Australia receives 
less than 15 inches of rainfall a year, and more than 
a third receives less than 10 inches. This enormous 
uninhabitable ocean of sand and bare rocks reduces 
the usable area of the land by one-half, and isolates 
Western Australia from the rest of the continent even 
more effectually than if it were an island. The 


west coast is mostly low and sandy, except for a few 
patches of grazing or farm lands and forest. 

The tropical northern coast is alternately drowned 
under summer rains so heavy that plowing is almost 

impossible, and 
parched by winter 
droughts. The 
overheated desert 
draws the mon¬ 
soon rains from 
the north during 
November, De¬ 
cember, and Jan¬ 
uary, and tropical 
grasses spring up 
to a height of ten 
feet in those three 
months, but so 
coarse and rank 
that they are use- 
less for stock¬ 
feeding 

Abundant 
moisture is 
brought by the 
“roaring forties,” 
—the westerly 
winds that belt the 
Southern Hemi¬ 
sphere between the 
40th and 50th parallels of latitude—but most of 
Australia is too far north to benefit. The extreme 
southwest tip is fairly well watered, but the reced¬ 
ing southern coast line along the Great Bight of 
Australia receives practically no rain for half its 
extent, until it bends to the south and catches the 
moisture of the western winds. The 
southeastern prolongation of the coun¬ 
try is abundantly watered, as a rule, 
and contains some of the best agri¬ 
cultural and grazing land of the 
country. 

Of the total area of Australia less 
than one per cent is under cultivation. 
Irrigation has redeemed many thou¬ 
sands of acres in the semi-arid regions, 
and several other great irrigating 
projects are on foot; but the extent 
of land that can thus be made avail¬ 
able for tilling and grazing is a mere 
fraction of the vast tracts that must 
forever remain desert. Australia has 
no great system of rivers to store up 
moisture and water the soil. Its 
streams are far fewer and smaller than those of any 
other continent, for it has no mountain snows to 
melt under the summer sun. Most of the Australian 
rivers are dry for part of the year, and few find 
their way to the sea. The one great river system 
is that formed by the Murray and Darling rivers, 


NEARLY AS LARGE AS THE UNITED STATES 



Imagine a sheet of glass of the size and shape of the United States laid down 
on a piece of sheepskin of the size and shape of Australia, and you will get a good 
idea of the relative size of the two commonwealths. 


NATIVE AUSTRALIAN 
GENTLEMAN 



He is in full dress—a bone in his 
nose, a bone ring on his fore¬ 
head, his body seamed with 
parallel scars. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place 

262 


see information 













CHIEF SOURCES OF AUSTRALIA’S WEALTH 



Here you see what a great contributor to the world’s wealth Australia is In the east and southeast, where there is sufficient rain, 
Australia already produces as much wheat as Kansas, and irrigation will greatly increase its yield. Its gold output is exceeded 
" h ‘ that of the United States and South Africa, and other mining interests remain to be developed, including coal and iron. In 
sheep raising, wWchis not so dependent as farming on rainfall, it leads the world, exporting enormous quantities of mutton and wool. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

263 




















A characteristic sight at the great seaports of Australia is the enormous piles of wheat in bags, sometimes covering a surface equal 
to a city block or more. The Australians have not adopted the American system of grain elevators, which so greatly simplify ship¬ 
ment. The wheat is put into bags on the farms and remains in the bags until it reaches its ultimate destination. Rats sometimes 
work terrible havoc in such wheat stores as you see in this picture. 


which drain the southeastern region. Irrigation 
therefore is obtained chiefly from artesian wells. 

The eastern, southeastern, and northern coasts, 
with a few areas in the west, are the parts of the 
country where the people live, and a population map 
shows 80 per cent of the inhabitants in a belt about 
100 miles wide along the eastern, southeastern, and 
southwestern coasts. Even in these settled portions 
the people arenot overcrowded,for European immigra¬ 
tion has been slow and the coming of Asiatics is 
discouraged in order that Australia may be “a white 
man’s continent.” The result is that Australia is 
less densely populated as a whole than Arizona, the 
most thinly populated of the states of the United 
States, having less than two inhabitants to the square 
mile. Though Australia constitutes a quarter of the 
area of the British Empire, it has only a little more 
than one per cent of the population of the empire. 
Though it is as large as three-quarters of Europe, it 
has fewer inhabitants than Holland. 

Wealth in Her Cattle, Sheep, and Mines 

Australia’s wealth lies chiefly in its cattle and sheep 
and its minerals. Large wheat crops are raised in 
the east and southeast, more than is needed to supply 
its scanty population, and so Australia is rated as one 
of the seven chief wheat-exporting countries, though 
its total crop is only about equal to that of Kansas. 
Grapevines thrive in many parts, yielding many 
tons of raisins and thousands of gallons of wine, both 
of which are exported in large quantities. Hay, corn, 
oats, barley, and other products of the temperate zone 
are grown in sufficient quantities for home demand, 
and the tropical regions of the central and northern 
coasts yield cotton, sugar cane, bananas, and rice. 


But far more important than the agricultural 
products are the sheep and cattle. Sheep-raising is 
the main industry and wool is the great product, since 
sheep grazing is less dependent on rainfall than other 
pasturage. The flocks are kept on enormous ranches 
or “runs,” sometimes 100,000 acres or more in extent 
and, because of the mildness of the winters, wool and 
mutton can be produced more cheaply than in most 
countries. Australian wool is chiefly merino of a 
quality unsurpassed for length, thickness, and fine¬ 
ness. Cattle are also raised in numbers great enough 
to make beef, hides, and dairy products important 
exports. 

Almost as important to the wealth of the country 
are its mines. The discovery of gold in 1851 marks 
an epoch in the history of Australia, for it brought in 
thousands of immigrants. The output, which has 
been as great as $90,000,000 in a single year, has 
declined recently, but is still large, being exceeded 
only by that of the United States and South Africa. 
There are also rich deposits of silver, copper, tin, 
lead, and zinc, which have not yet been fully devel¬ 
oped. The abundant supplies of coal and iron point 
to great manufacturing possibilities, though as yet 
the manufactures of Australia are relatively unimpor¬ 
tant. The pearl fisheries of the northern coast are 
among the largest known. 

The more settled parts of Australia are well supplied 
with railroads, and in 1917 a transcontinental line 
was completed from Fort Augusta, at the head of 
Spencer Gulf in South Australia, to Perth in Western 
Australia, a distance of 1,052 miles. A line across 
the continent from north to south is also projected. 
Australia has more than 21,000 miles of government- 


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What Queer Animals! 


AUSTRALIA 


WASHING GOLD OUT OF THE SAND 



This picture illustrates the systematic way in which placer mining is carried on in Australia, by means of long wooden sluices with 
cleats or “riffles” at intervals. Quicksilver is placed in the riffles and this catches and holds the gold as the dirt is washed over, 
each successive riffle catching a portion of what preceding riffles have missed. The men with the shovels keep stirring the dirt and 

gravel to help this washing-out process. 


owned railways, while only about 1,100 are pri¬ 
vately owned; and the telegraph and telephone lines are 
also owned and operated by the government. The rail¬ 
road situation is complicated by the fact that the 
“gauge” or width between the rails is not uniform in 
all the colonies, most of the railroads of New South 
Wales having the “standard” gauge of 4 ft. 8K in., 
while those of South Australia are mostly “broad 
gauge” (5 ft. 3 in.), and those of Queensland are 
“narrow gauge” (3 ft. 6 in.). Numerous steamship 
lines connect Australia with the outside world, and 
there has been a marked increase in commerce with 
the United States since the opening of the Panama 
Canal. The admission of goods from Great Britain 
and Ireland at a lower rate of duty than from other 
countries (“preferential tariff”) is designed to encour¬ 
age commerce with the mother country. 

The native plant and animal life of Australia is 
perhaps the most curious and interesting in all the 
world. Most of the more than 10,000 species of 
plants are found nowhere else in the world, and the 
animals are so different from those of other lands that 
scientists sometimes group all the animals of the 
world into two classes: Australian and non-Austra¬ 
lian. In past geological ages, millions of years ago, 
the plant life that covered the earth was very different 

contained in the Easy Reference 


from that of today. In America and Europe these 
primitive forms are found only as fossils, but in 
Australia they are still flourishing. In the moist 
tropical forests are huge tree-ferns, and gigantic lilies 
and tulips that are not garden flowers such as we 
know, but large trees. In all parts of the country 
we see the wonderful eucalyptus tree, native to Aus¬ 
tralia, of which about 300 species have been dis¬ 
covered—some of them measuring more than 400 
feet in height. The wood of many varieties is 
remarkable for its strength and durability and is 
exported for building purposes. From the eucalyptus 
leaves and gums come many valuable oils (see 
Eucalyptus). 

Various species of wattle, belonging to the acacia 
family, are of commercial importance for their timber 
and for their bark, which is used in tanning. The 
flower of the golden wattle, which resembles goldenrod 
in appearance, is the national flower of Australia, and 
in spring the valleys and gullies are ablaze with its 
radiance. 

A Strange Zoo of Ancient Life 
When the land bridge connecting Australia with 
the rest of the world broke down, the continent 
ceased to share in the progressive development of 
higher forms of life^ with the result that its animal 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

265 








AUSTRALIA 


1 \ Living Men of the Stone Age ( 



That long sturdy tail of the gray opossum (or phalanger) of 
Australia is as useful to him as a fifth hand. By its aid he 
climbs trees with all the agility of a New World monkey. The 
grey opossum is about the size of a large cat and his fur is in 
great demand for the manufacture of carriage rugs. 

life is distinctive. It has no native cats, pigs, horses, 
cattle, sheep, elephants, tigers, lions, camels, or other 
highly developed forms of animals. A few rodents 
and a wild dog called the “dingo” are almost the only 
kinds of the higher mammals. On the other hand, 
it has preserved scores of primitive animals which 
have been extinct in other lands for ages. 

For example, there is the great 
kangaroo, famous for the prodigious 
leaps it makes and for the pouch 
in which the mother carries and 
nurses her babies. The wombat, 
the wallaby, and the bandicoot 
are the kangaroo’s cousins; and it 
has many other relatives, some of 
them as small as mice, but all 
having the peculiar pouch which 
marks them as “marsupials,” a 
family which, except for the opos¬ 
sum of North America and the 
opossum-rat of Patagonia, is no 
longer found on any other conti¬ 
nent (see Kangaroo). Stranger still, 
perhaps, are the duckbill or platypus 
—a web-footed, beaver-tailed creature with a bird¬ 
like beak—and the spiny ant-eater, both of which are 
egg-laying mammals, the only creatures of the sort 
in the world. They form a connecting link between 
the mammals or “suckling” animals of today and 
the great family of reptiles from which the mammals 
and birds have both developed (see Duckbill). 

The national bird is the emu, known as “the 
Australian ostrich” (see Emu). There are also many 
beautiful and sweet-voiced birds, among them the 
bower-bird, which builds a bower or playhouse, and 
the lyre-bird, famous for its plumage. Cockatoos 
and parrots enliven many a woodland scene by their 
chatter and their gorgeous colors. Also of interest 
is the famous “laughing jackass” or kookaburra, a 
member of the kingfisher family, whose curious cry and 
strange habits make it a perpetual source of wonder. 

The natives of Australia—called “blackfellows”— 
are likewise remnants of a bygone age. They 
resemble the negro of Africa in color, and like the 
negro most of them have very broad flat noses, but 
their hair is wavy rather than woolly. When first 
discovered they were the most primitive of savages. 


They wore no clothing in summer and in winter only 
the skins of beasts. For shelter they had only caves 
or huts of the rudest sort and often were mere 
nomads. They ate almost any kind of plant or 
animal life—not only the flesh of the kangaroo and 
opossum, but caterpillars, moths, beetles, lizards, 
snakes, etc. They did not cultivate the soil, and 
could not count beyond three or four. On the other 
hand, thousands of years of hunting life had made 
them amazingly cunning in tracking an animal to its 
lair and killing it. Their weapons consist of stone 
hatchets and spears, and most curious of all, the 
boomerang—a flat curved piece of wood which they 
used both in hunting and in war (see Boomerang). 
So severely have these primitive men suffered from 
the inroads of civilization and from the encroachments 
of the white settlers that only about 80,000 of them 
are left in the whole land. 

The History of Australia 

Australia was the last of the continents to be 
discovered by Europeans. The 
Portuguese knew something of the 
land as early as 1542 and Luis de 
Torres, a Spaniard, in 1606 sailed 
along the coast and gave his name 
to Torres Strait. Abel Tasman, a 
Dutch navigator, in 1642 discovered 
the island now called Tasmania, 
though he named it Van Diemen’s 
Land. William Dampier, a free¬ 
booter, in 1688 was the first Eng¬ 
lishman to set foot on Australia. 

It was not till 1770, however, 
that the real nature of the land 
became known. Captain James 
Cook in that year, as head of an 
English scientific expedition, 
landed in Botany Bay, where Sydney now stands. 
He explored the eastern coast northward and planted 



This big relative of the kangaroo, called the diprotodon, was 
nearly as large as a small elephant. Compare his size with that 
of the giant kangaroo near him, and the 4-foot log he has his 
paws on. The diprodoton has been extinct for many thousands 
of years but scientists have found its remains in great abundance 
in dried-up salt lakes of Australia. 



The spiny ant-eater, or echidna, which is 
found in Australia, Tasmania, and New 
Guinea, is remarkable for being the only 
mammal in the world (except its rela¬ 
tive, the duckbill) that brings forth its 
young in eggs. Its slender snout and 
long sticky tongue enable it easily to 
pick up the juicy larvae of ants on which 
it chiefly feeds. 


For any subject 


not found in 


it 8 alphabetical 


266 


place 


see information 







the English flag on Cape York, thus establishing the 
British claim to the continent. Of the many explorers 
of the interior, the most remarkable for personal dar¬ 
ing was Edward John Eyre. In 1840 he began a 


perilous journey from the Great Australian Bight, 
which led him through 1,200 miles of wilderness 
and scorching desert. More than a year later, accom¬ 
panied only by a single native “boy,” he came out 
on King George’s Sound, in Western Australia. 
He had traversed the whole route which in a 
general way is now followed by the Transcontinental 
Railway. 

The first settlement came soon after the loss of 
most of England’s colonies in America, when a body 
of such convicts as had formerly been sent to them 
was landed in Australia, forming the beginning of the 
colony of New South Wales (1788). Other British 


colonies soon followed, but it was not till 1896 that 
practically the whole of the continent had been 
explored. The discovery of gold, in 1851, brought a 
rush of immigration that greatly increased population. 

A Land of Progressive Policies 
In 1900, after local jealousies 
had balked many attempts to 
unite, the six Australian colonies 
formed a federation under an act 
of the British Parliament, which 
went into effect the following year. 
The name of the new federal gov¬ 
ernment is the Commonwealth of 
Australia, and it is one of the 
youngest of the great states of 
the world. Its constitution was 
modelled on that of the United 
States, and—unlike Canada—all 
powers not specifically delegated 
to the federal government are 
retained by the states. Like 
Canada, Australia is practically 
self-governing and independent, 
though the governor-general of 
the commonwealth and the gov¬ 
ernors of the various states are 
appointed by the British Govern¬ 
ment. Primary education is free 
and compulsory. Equal suffrage 
is enjoyed by men and women. 
Strict laws have been passed to 
further the policy of a “white 
Australia” and exclude the col¬ 
ored races. Australia was one of 
the first countries to enact old age 
and invalid pension laws, and it 
is noted for its advanced legisla¬ 
tion in connection with labor 
problems. The “Australian 
ballot,” now used in England, 
Canada, and the United States, is 
one of the modern reforms which 
originated in this progressive 
country. 

The temporary seat of the fed¬ 
eral government was established 
at Melbourne, but provision was 
made for a new capital at Canberra, where work 
was begun in 1913. This city, like Washington in the 
District of Columbia, is in a district set apart by 
the government and known as Federal Territory (see 
Canberra). 

Australian cities are among the most up to date, 
the cleanest, the most attractive in the world, for 
none of them suffer from overcrowding, and slums 
are unknown. Sydney, the largest city and the 
seventh in size in the British Empire, is about as 
large as Boston or St. Louis. It owes its importance, 
and in large measure its beauty, to its spacious 
harbor, with “deep water fingers stretching miles up 


THE RESCUE OF EDWARD JOHN EYRE 


Edward John Eyre was one of the greatest Australian explorers, for he explored from 
the shores of the Great Australian Bight to King George’s Sound, in Western Australia. 
On the point of starvation, with just a single native “boy” left of his expedition, he 
lighted a fire on a rock and so attracted a passing ship. Weak and emaciated, he 
staggered with outstretched arms towards his rescuers. Never had they seen such a 
figure. Having been given up for lost, he seemed to them like a man from the dead. 






f A~U S T RALIA 


A Utopia for Workers 





No wonder young Englishmen feel so much at home in Sydney. It doesn’t look at all like a 
new town in a new land, but like a fine old town in Mother England. The University of Sydney 
as you see in the photograph, is a splendid structure in the Gothic style. 


between wooded banks” 

(see Sydney). Melbourne, 
which has been called the 
“Chicago of Australia,” 
has many unusually beauti¬ 
ful public buildings, parks, 
and gardens (see Mel¬ 
bourne). 

Adelaide offers perhaps 
the most attractive recrea¬ 
tional and outdoor life, and 
is famed as a residential city. 

Throughout all the Aus¬ 
tralian cities there is an 
air of prosperity and well¬ 
being. Wealth is more 
evenly distributed than in 
most other advanced nations. There are compara¬ 
tively few very rich and no very poor people. It has 
been said that “labor is Icing” in Australia. Working 


conditions are excellent, and hours so regulated 
as to give abundant leisure for the outdoor sports 
and picnics which are the favorite forms of recreation. 

The Literature of Australia 
Australian literature is largely a growth 
of the last half-century, but already the 
commonwealth can boast of a consider¬ 
able number of notable writers. Their 
works are full of the local color of convict 
life, gold hunters, and bushrangers, as 
well as “the burning wastes of barren 
soil and sand” and other Australian 
nature notes. Among the chief poets 
of the earlier period are Adam Lindsay 
Gordon, who won fame by his ‘ Sea Spray 
and Smoke Drift* (1867), and ‘Bush 
Ballads’ (1870); and Henry Clarence 
Kendall who ranks as the national poet 
because of his ‘Leaves from an Aus¬ 
tralian Forest’ (1869), and ‘Songs from 
the Mountains’ (1882). More recent 
writers of verse are Edward Dyson 
(‘ Rhymes from the Mines’, 1896); Henry 
Lawson (‘While the Billy Boils’), and 
A. B. Patterson, whose ‘Man from 
Snowy River’ (1895) is one of many 
poems filled with the life of the drover. 
Australian fiction is represented by 
Marcus Clarke’s convict tale, ‘For the 
Term of His Natural Life’ (1870); by 
the many delightful novels of bush, 
diggings, and convict life written by 
Thomas Alexander Browne (‘Rolf Boldre- 
wood’); by Walter Jeffrey’s South Sea 
tales, entitled ‘ By Reef and Palm’ and 
‘Wild Life in the Southern Seas’; by 
Guy Boothby’s ‘The Beautiful White 
Devil’ (1896); and by Arthur Hoey 
Davis (‘Steel Rudd’), whose unflatter¬ 
ing sketches of the Queensland small 
farmer put him in the humorist class. 
These are but the merest samples, for 
already Australia has to her credit more 


Half the population of the province of Victoria lives in Melbourne, the capital. 
The city is noted for its many handsome public buildings and parks. This view 
in the shopping district gives an idea of its substantial appearance. 


For any subject 


found in its alphabetical place see information 


268 




















) New Ideas in Government 



AUSTRIA 


than 300 volumes of published novels and tales, 
by writers born in Australia or who have come from 
the mother country to make the island continent 
the scene of their lives and work. Australians also 
take pride in the fact that Madame Melba, the world- 
famous operatic singer, was a native of their Land 
of the Southern Cross. 

Other Facts of Interest About Australia 

Australia is the only continent wholly surrounded by water 
and the only one wholly within the Southern Hemisphere. 

Nearly half of Australia lies within the tropics, but the 

air in summer is so dry 
that a temperature of 
120 degrees in the shade 
does not cause as great 
discomfort as a tem¬ 
perature of 90 does in 
New York City or Lon¬ 
don. Frost seldom oc¬ 
curs except in the great 
interior desert, which 
is also the hottest part 
in summer. In no part 
does enough ice form 
for skating. 

White ants, or ter¬ 
mites, are a terrible 
plague in some sections, 
eating away unprotect¬ 
ed woodwork wherever 
they can get at it. 

Australian wheat is 
planted and reaped 
with the most up-to- 
date machinery, but 
the grain is handled in 
a primitive way. There 
are no grain elevators, 
and the grain is packed 
in bags in the fields and 
remains in those bags 
until it reaches its des¬ 
tination. Great piles 
of bags 20 feet high and 
covering the space of a 
city block are familiar 
sights at shipping cen¬ 
ters. 

Camels originally 
imported from Asia are 
used for transportation 
through the Great 
Desert. 

Australia has 100 
species of snakes, three- 
fourths of them venomous, and 390 kinds of lizards, some 
of them six feet long. None of the large animals found there 
attack man unless brought to bay. 

Countless millions of rabbits, the descendants of a few in¬ 
troduced in the middle of the 19th century, would soon turn 
all the grazing lands into grassless desert, were it not for 
ceaseless vigilance. Millions of frozen rabbits and rabbit 
skins are shipped to England every year. More than 100,000 
miles of wire fences have been put up to check their ravages. 

Twenty-three distinct varieties of palm found nowhere 
else grow in Australia. 

Ninety-six per cent of the inhabitants are of British origin. 
Most of the remainder are Chinese, with a sprinkling of other 
Asiatics and Pacific Islanders. 

Less than four per cent of the white population is illiterate, 
as against nearly eight per cent for the United States. Every 
second person in the country has a bank account. Less 
than six per cent of the total area of Australia is in 


private ownership; 46 per cent is held under various forms of 
leases and licenses from the crown, and about an equal area 
is entirely unoccupied. 

Considerably more than half of Australian trade is with 
Great Britain and other members of the British Empire. 

The scope of governmental action, both in the Federation 
and in the various states, is far greater than in the United 
States. Public ownership of utilities, including railroads 
and street cars, is the rule. The governments own most of 
the lands, which they sell or lease to farmers, further assisting 
buyers with loans from state banks at low interest. Govern¬ 
ments make clothes and machinery, run warehouses and 
stores, and operate mining plants. Hours of labor are 
regulated by law; pensions are paid those disabled by old 
age or sickness; bonuses are given to mothers on the birth 
of each child; minimum wages are prescribed; arbitration of 
industrial disputes is compulsory. 

Since 1911 Australia has had compulsory military training. 
At about the same time it began to create a navy, which 
included about 20 vessels in 1914. 

During the World War of 1914-18 Australia rendered 
invaluable service to the Allies. Its navy helped to clear 
the Pacific islands of German ships. Volunteer troops to 
the number of 300,000 were sent to France, Gallipoli, Mace¬ 
donia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and more than two-thirds 
of them were killed or wounded. By the peace treaty of 1919 
all Germany’s Pacific possessions south of the Equator were 
put under the administration of Australia or New Zealand. 

AUSTRIA. The present state of Austria, as estab¬ 
lished by the treaty of St. Germain (Sept. 10, 1919), 
is a mere fragment of the great Austro-Hungarian 
Dual Monarchy which joined with Germany in 1914 
to plunge the world into war. Its territory of 32,000 
square miles includes only about one-eighth of the 
lands that constituted the former monarchy, and its 
population numbers only 6,500,000, compared with 
the 53,000,000 ruled from Vienna by the emperor- 
king, Francis Joseph. The present Austria consists 
broadly>of the former Austrian provinces of Upper 
and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and 
the north part of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, with the 
addition of certain slices of western Hungary inhabited 
by Germans. 

The new republic was proclaimed as a separate 
state on Nov. 12,1918, the day following the armistice 
which concluded the World War. It has been greatly 
hampered by the burden of debt, reparation claims, 
poverty, and unemployment which resulted from the 
war. A large proportion of the people would favor 
union with Germany, but such a step is forbidden in 
the peace treaties, except with the consent of the 
council of the League of Nations. 

The chief occupation of the country is agriculture, 
but production is not equal to its needs. Manufac¬ 
tures of automobiles, pianos, and textiles are the next 
most important industries. Iron ore, lignite (a low- 
grade coal), copper, zinc, and lead are among the 
mineral resources, and timber abounds. 

The capital, Vienna, was once “the gayest city of 
Europe” and an important manufacturing center, 
but the influence of the war has crushed its gayety 
and splendor and paralyzed its industrial life (see 
Vienna). Other important cities are Gratz (popula¬ 
tion, about 156,000), Linz (70,000), Innsbruck 
(57,000), and Salzburg (37,000). 


FALLS WILL BE FALLS! 



Waterfalls will be waterfalls, laugh¬ 
ing and dancing toward the sea, 
wherever they are! This is Erskine 
Falls, near Lome, Victoria, in one 
of Australia’s rainy regions. 


contained i n the Easy Reference Eact-fndex cl t the end of this work 










AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


A Trip in an Airplane 


The “CRAZY-QUILT” that WAS AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


A ustria - Hungary. 

Four hundred years 
of wars and intrigue and 
fortunate marriages pro¬ 
duced the motley “crazy- 
quilt” of a dozen or more 
nationalities, speaking 
over a dozen languages, 
which was formerly Austria-Hungary. Four and a 
half years of reckless war tore it to fragments and 
destroyed what had been one of the five Great Powers 
of Europe. 


Extent. —North to south, 800 miles; east to west, 650 miles; area, 
261,241 square miles. Population, about 51,000,000. 

Mountains. —Eastern Alps, Carpathians, Bohemian Forest, etc.; the 
most mountainous country in Europe after Switzerland. 

Rivers.— Danube, with its tributaries, the Save, Drave, and Theiss; 
Moldau and Elbe in Bohemia. 

Principal Products. —Iron and steel, coal, wheat, textiles, sugar, 
wine, etc. 

States Formed from Austria-Hungary. —Czecho-Slovakia; Jugo¬ 
slavia; Austria; Hungary. Poland and Rumania also received 
parts of Austria-Hungary. 


If we had viewed this 
region from an airplane 
before 1914 we should have 
seen aland stretching from 
the lofty Alps of Switzer¬ 
land on the west to the 
granite wall of the Car¬ 
pathians on the east, and 
from the plains of Ger¬ 
many and Russia on the 
north to the mountainous 
peninsula of the Balkans 
on the south. It is a 
country made up of many 
geographical blocks, and 
with a population divided 
into an even larger number 
of national groups. 

A Land that Artists Love 

In the west are the lofty 
Alps of the Tyrol, rivaling 
in their grandeur the 
mountain monarchs of 
Switzerland. Here is the 
land of rapid rivers and 
pleasant vallej^s inter¬ 
spersed amid snowy peaks 
and glaciers of the moun¬ 
tains. We catch glimpses 

of vine-clad hills, of fruitful valleys, and of prosper¬ 
ous farms dotted with flocks and herds and flecked 
with hundreds of white geese and ducks. Pines 
cover the upper slopes of the mountains, and beeches 
and chestnuts the lower ones, while perched on 
occasional cliffs we see the ruins of ancient castles 
which carry us back in imagination to medieval days. 
And everywhere by the roadsides are sheltered shrines 
with crucifixes, before which the devout Catholic 
peasants stop to tell their beads in prayer. 

As we sweep northward in our plane there unfolds 
a panorama of lake and mountain, the highlands 
gradually becoming less rugged until we see the 
“ beautiful blue Danube” flowing between the hills and 
meadows of the crown-lands of Upper and Lower 
Austria. Vienna, the former imperial capital, is set 


A FROWNING CASTLE OF THE TYROL 



Castle Runkelstein, perched on a lofty pedestal of porphyry, is 
one of the many frowning strongholds in the Tyrol to remind us 
of the turbulent Middle Ages. It was built in the 13th century, 
near the little town of Bozen in that part of the former Austrian 
Tyrol which has been given to Italy. An extraordinary collec¬ 
tion of frescoes telling the stories of Tristan and Isolde and 
other medieval legends adorns its walls. 


like a jewel in the midst 
of rolling grain fields, but 
is somewhat obscured by 
the smoke of the many 
factory chimneys, for this 
was the workshop of the 
Hapsburg domains. In it 
were produced most of the 
machines and steel rails, the clothing and the leather 
goods, which were shipped down the Danube, the com¬ 
mercial highway of the empire; while the farmers of 
Hungary sent back meat, 
grain, and wine in return. 

Crossing the Moravian 
Hills we reach Bohemia, 
a diamond-shaped quadri¬ 
lateral surrounded on 
three sides by mountains 
—the Bohemian Forest, 
Ore Mountains, and Giant 
Mountains—and on the 
fourth by the steep hills 
we have just passed. In 
this province—jutting far 
into Germany—high blue 
mountains, dark forest- 
upland, and broad hop 
and barley fields alternate, 
with here and there pic¬ 
turesque prosperous cities 
and villages. The capital 
Prague lies in the center. 
Innumerable streams give 
fertility to the soil and are 
used also as a motive power 
for factories that make 
bohemia famous. Coal, 
iron, and other minerals 
are abundant, and contrib¬ 
ute to Bohemia’s manu¬ 
factures of Bohemian 
glass, of iron and steel, of textiles, toys, beet sugar, 
and beer. By sailing close to the ground we may 
see the goose-girls, with their gay petticoats and 
bright kerchiefs, watching their feathered flocks, and 
the shepherds tending their herds in their stiff sheep¬ 
skin coats which serve as protection from the rain and 
snow in winter and from the sun in summer. 

From Bohemia we cross the narrow agricultural and 
industrial province of Austrian Silesia—all that was 
left by the greed of Frederick the Great of Prussia to 
the young queen Maria Theresa out of a much larger 
province of that name. So we come to Galicia, the 
fateful booty torn by Austria from unhappy Poland 
when that kingdom was extinguished in the 18th cen¬ 
tury by its powerful neighbors. No obstacles obstruct 
our view here, for this country, stretching away to 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

270 








AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


) Among the Many Peoples 




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SCALE OF MILES 


irRoMt: 


“If we had viewed Austria-Hungary from an airplane before the war, we should have seen a land stretching from the lofty Alps 
of Switzerland on the west, to the granite walls of the Carpathians on the east, and from the plains of Germany and Russia on the 
north, to the mountainous peninsula of the Balkans on the south.” 


the Carpathians on the south, is a seemingly intermin¬ 
able plain, bleak in winter, and agriculture is almost 
the sole occupation of the people. Here nevertheless 
are the historic old city of Cracow and the thriving 
industrial Lemberg, the third city in size in Austria- 
Hungary. The Polish peasants—the men in their 
queer long white coats, and the women with their 
large shawls and brilliant head-dresses—form pictur¬ 
esque groups in the country market-places and in the 
well-cultivated fields. The style of dress varies with 
nearly every village, but in all we can easily discern 
the brilliant scarlet and the white of the national 
colors of the Poles, who form about one-half of the 
population of Galicia, the other half being Ruthenians. 

Hungary, the Land of the Magyars 
Turning south from Galicia we reach Hungary, the 
“land of the Magyars,” lying in the far-flung bow of 
the Carpathians, more than 800 miles across. This 
was an Austria-Hungary in miniature, in which the 
proud Magyars of the plains lorded it over their 
Rumanian fellow-subjects of the mountainous forest¬ 
land of Transylvania and over the Croats and other 


South Slavs. Here high mountains alternate with 
fertile valleys, while the great granite wall of moun¬ 
tains is made beautiful almost to its summit with 
trees of many kinds, and the lower slopes are covered 
with vineyards from whose fruit is made the famous 
Tokay wine. The fertile plains of Hungary are the 
granary of Europe. Covered with fields of wheat and 
corn they furnished food not only for the people of 
Austria-Hungary, but likewise for other countries. 
Passing by the great amphitheater-shaped city of 
Budapest, we see here and there the clustered roofs of 
villages between plowed fields and pasture-grounds 
filled with herds of horned cattle. Before the white¬ 
washed cottages here and there sit peasants in blue 
jackets and trousers, the wife with a dark blue apron 
over a white linen gown. 

Crossing the deep swift flood of the Danube we 
reach the Slavic lands of the south—Croatia and 
Slavonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. At first we cross 
broad fertile plains, rich with vines and luxuriant 
foliage, with here and there beech and oak forests in 
which numerous herds of hogs find abundant pro- 


t he Easy Reference Fact-index at the end of t his work 

271 


contained in 










The Harbors Men Fought For"f 


PEASANT SCENES IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



The thatch-roofed house of the peasant shown in the upper left-hand corner of this group is made of stone, plastered and white¬ 
washed. The next picture shows an attractive home in a village. Everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe women do much 
of the heavy labor. The last picture shows a quaint old bell tower in the center of a village. Above women are drying peas 

to be used in the thick soup, which forms an important part of their diet. 


vision. Great open spaces are covered with rose 
plantations, while wild mignonette, scarlet poppies, 
lilies, orchids, and wild thyme give forth a perfume 
which reaches us even in our airplane. We sail by to 
the lofty desolate highland region beyond, where 
mighty snow-capped peaks rise tier upon tier, their 
lower slopes descending into great lonely dark forests 
of oak and fir. And as the scenery changes from plain 
to mountain, so the white linen garments of the plains¬ 
men give place to the brilliant peasant dress of the 
mountain folk. All are engaged in agriculture, but 
their methods are primitive and their crops are poor. 

But these lands are far more fertile than those of 
the magnificent but barren half-Slavic and half- 


Italian district of Dalmatia, on the coast of the 
Adriatic. There great mountains, with their snow¬ 
capped peaks lost in the clouds, wash their feet in the 
peaceful sea. And yet Goths and Slavs, Magyars 
and Turks, Venetians, French, and Austrians for 
centuries fought for this stern and rock-bound coast. 
For here are located the only good harbors of the 
eastern coast of the Adriatic—Triest the modern 
rival of Venice, and Fiume the storm center of the 
Paris Peace Conference, which were Austria-Hun¬ 
gary’s only outlets to the sea. Here also we see the 
town of Cattaro, with its dark-gray bleak and wind¬ 
swept rocks towering above its peaceful fiord. We 
pass by proud Ragusa, bride of the sea and daughter 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


272 


place 


see information 


























- - 

What a Babel of Tongues! 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 


of the mountain, which for hundreds of years (until 
1815) maintained itself as an independent republic. 
And if we are flying low enough we may see the sleepy 
little town of Spalato, which today is literally built 
in the palace of the emperor Diocletian, the courts 
and corridors serving as 
streets and open spaces 
for the town. In the fairs 
and market-places of 
these towns, which serve 
as places of amusement 
as well as of buying and 
selling, we catch glimpses 
of the coin-decked head- 
gear and the be jeweled 
dresses of the neighbor¬ 
ing peasants. 

Dalmatia is our last 
stop on our air-voyage, 
for when we turn to¬ 
wards the north we come 
once more to the snow¬ 
capped Alps from which 
we started. From our 
airplane we could not 
learn the most peculiar 
thing about this former 
state, for we were too 
high up to hear the many 
different languages 
spoken by its peoples. 

Suppose you were to 
take a trip from Port¬ 
land, Me., through Ver¬ 
mont, Massachusetts, 

Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, New Jersey, and 
Maryland, down to Vir¬ 
ginia, and in crossing 
these eight states you 
should find people speaking 21 different languages. Or 
suppose that you should go from New York City to 
Cleveland, Ohio, and in that distance have to know 
20 different languages to be able to understand what 
the people were talking about. This is the condition 
you would have found in Austria-Hungary, if you had 
gone by train or automobile through this land which 
we have viewed from our airplane; and yet the terri¬ 
tory is no greater than the United States from Maine 
to Virginia, and from New York to Ohio. 

Do you wonder that Emperor Francis Joseph, who 
ruled this land from 1848 to 1916, had trouble in 
governing his people, when he had to publish in 11 
different languages his call for a meeting of parlia¬ 
ment? At one time Austria herself recognized this 
weakness and tried to make German the official 
language of the whole land and so far as possible to 
Germanize the people; but the attempt was fore¬ 
doomed to failure. In 1848 the Bohemians (Czechs) 
and the Magyars almost won their independence, 


but the Magyars tried to Magyarize their Croat 
fellow-subjects, just as Austria had tried to Germanize 
them all, and as a result the South Slavs aided 
Austria in crushing the Magyar republic. Bohemia 
was then bombarded into obedience. In 1869 the 

Magyars were taken into 
partnership with the 
Austrians in what was 
called the Dual Mon¬ 
archy of Austria-Hun¬ 
gary. This partially 
satisfied them, but left 
the Poles and the Ruthen- 
ians, Czechs and Jugo¬ 
slavs, no better off than 
before. 

When Austria- 
Hungary was defeated 
in the World War of 
1914-18, the end came 
and the old dominion of 
the Hapsburgs ceased to 
exist. Even the original 
nucleus, Austria, passed 
from the hands of this 
royal house, which had 
ruled the land since 1278, 
when Rudolph of 
Hapsburg obtained it. 
Hungary, curtailed of 
Transylvania, became 
an independent republic. 
Out of the remaining ter¬ 
ritory were resurrected 
the national states of 
Poland and Czecho¬ 
slovakia (based on the 
old Bohemia), while the 
Slav lands south of the 
Danube cast in their lot 
with Serbia to form the new state of Jugo-Slavia. 

The real growth of the Hapsburg family began with Fred¬ 
erick III (1440-93), whose reign illustrates the saying that 
“while other states grew by wars, Austria grew by fortunate 
marriages.” Under him Tyrol was acquired and a basis was 
laid for the future addition of Bohemia and Hungary. He 
inscribed on his buildings and possessions the five vowels 
“A E I O U,” which were interpreted to mean Austriae est 
imperare orbi universo (in German, Alles Erdreich ist Oester- 
reich unterthan), that is, “The whole world is subject to 
Austria.” Under Emperor Charles V this boast came near 
to fulfillment, but his vast possessions were soon divided 
between a Spanish and an Austrian branch of the Hapsburgs. 

When Queen Maria Theresa came to the Austrian throne 
in 1740, Frederick the Great of Prussia unscrupulously seized 
part of her territories. In the War of the Austrian Succes¬ 
sion which followed, Prussia gained most of Silesia, but 
Austria maintained the rest of her possessions. In the latter 
part of the same century Austria shared in the shameful 
partitions of Poland. In 1908 Bosnia and Herzegovina were 
added, in disregard of promises made in 1878. 

The government of Austria-Hungary since 1869 was a Dual 
Monarchy consisting of the Austrian Empire and the Hun¬ 
garian Kingdom. Each managed its own affairs, but had 
the same ruler and the same ministries for common affairs. 


YOUNG PEASANTS IN HOLIDAY DRESS 



One of the most interesting things to the traveler in Central 
Europe is the amazing variety of picturesque national costumes. 
This is the holiday dress of young Rumanian peasants of Tran¬ 
sylvania, which was formerly a part of Hungary. The man’s 
linen tunic and wool trousers are of homespun material. 


tained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

273 








| AUTOMOBILE 


A Marvel of Mechanics 



The AUTOMOBILE and HOW IT WORKS 


AUTOMOBILE. We 

^ must know something* 
about many things if we 
would know how to run 
an automobile. It has 
come to seem a simple 
thing — something that 
any intelligent boy can 
do after a few lessons. 

Yet when the driver 
takes his seat and 
touches levers and con¬ 
trols with his hands and 
feet, he is really the unconscious master of all the 
powers stored up in electricity, explosive gasoline, 
and water under hydraulic pressure of pumps. When 
he sets a spark flashing in imprisoned gas, pistons 
begin to work, water to flow, and air fans to whirl; 
batteries are stored with more electricity; then, as 
his foot releases the clutch, gears whirl and wheels 
turn on their cushions of air and rubber, and he 
dashes away in a marvel of steel and mechanics that 
is as wonderful as the magic carpet in the tales 
of the ‘Arabian Nights’. 

There is no limit to the new things men can make 
from old things, and, after all, it is the old things that 
men have combined in an automobile. And nothing 
is older or more 
wonderful than the 
use they have 
made of a drop of 
gasoline stored 
centuries ago in 
the bowels of the 
earth. Like an 
imprisoned jinn, it 
hauls great trucks 
of coal to our 
doors, or whirls us 
away to new lands 
and new pleasures. 

No invention 
ever made by man 
met with the im¬ 
mediate and wide¬ 
spread success that 
distinguishes the 
automobile. In 
1896 there were 
four automobiles 
in the United 
States. They were 
heavy, cumber¬ 
some, and easily outdistanced by a horse and carriage. 
Twenty-five years later 2,000,000 motor vehicles were 
being manufactured each year in the United States 
alone—most of them swift and powerful machines— 


and in the list were types 
adapted to any sort of 
work or travel. It was 
estimated that there 
were 10,000,000 automo¬ 
biles in the United 
States, or one for every 
ten inhabitants. 

In those 25 years the 
whole system of traffic 
was revolutionized. To¬ 
day all over the world 
the automobile has 
largely replaced the horse. The former khedive of 
Egypt drove his cars in sight of the pyramids, and 
the sultan of Turkey rode in an imperial limousine. 
The high passes of the Alps and the Vale of Cash- 
mere, the frozen steppes of Russia, the burning 
sands of Arabia, and the wide veldt of South Africa 
have all been conquered; and motor sledges have even 
penetrated the icy desolation of the Antarctic conti¬ 
nent with the ill-fated expedition of Capt. Robert F. 
Scott. In the United States, where there are more 
automobiles in proportion to the population than in 
any other country, hundred-mile trips are made as 
casually as a journey to the next town was formerly 
undertaken. In the cities the roar of the thousands 

of trucks and auto¬ 
mobiles is like Ni¬ 
agara; and in the 
country not merely 
does the automo¬ 
bile link the farmer 
to town as never 
before, but auto¬ 
mobile tractors 
make it possible for 
one man to accom¬ 
plish more plow¬ 
ing, reaping, and 
other work than 
20 men could for¬ 
merly do. 

In the great 
World War the 
automobile was so 
important that 
some enthusiasts 
have declared that 
“the automobile 
won the war.” 
The motorcycle 
and the armored 
motor car took the place of the cavalry scout 
of the older days. Shells for the great field and 
siege guns went up to the front in motor trucks, and 
many of the guns themselves traveled with the shifting 


/J MAN on foot can travel at best 30 miles from his home 
between sunrise and sunset; and a 30-mile circle in the 
United States contains on the average 90,000 persons. A 
man on horseback has at his command a 60-mile circle, 
containing perhaps 500,000 persons. But a man'in an 
automobile, with a day’s range of 300 miles, widens his 
horizon to include 9,000,000 individuals. This suggests 
the importance of the automobile to civilization. Whether 
a man be a doctor, a scientific expert, a political leader, or 
a salesman, his value depends to a large extent on the 
scope of his personal influence or service. So you see the 
automobile has, in this sense, made one man equal to 18 
on horseback, and equal to 100 men on foot. 


THE GRANDFATHER OF AMERICAN AUTOMOBILES 



This is the earliest successful American automobile propelled by gasoline. It 
was built by Elwood Haynes of Kokomo, Ind., in 1893-94 and is now preserved 
in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. It is really nothing more than a 
modified buggy with an engine installed. But a horse could beat it easily in a race. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

274 






Motor Transport in War 



AUTOMOBILE 



Doesn’t look much like the high-powered automobile that carries us through cities and whisks us over country roads at sixty 
miles an hour, does it? And yet, if it hadn’t been for this queer contrivance, possibly we wouldn’t have had any modern auto¬ 
mobiles. This road locomotive, for which the frightened toll-keeper is opening the gate, was invented and built by Richard 
Trevethick in 1800 and was the first self-propelled vehicle that ever ran along a road. Trevethick and a companion are here 
shown passing a toll gate. The toll-keeper, thinking they are two evil spirits, assures them with chattering teeth there is nothing 
to pay, but he will appreciate it if they will pass on as quickly as ever they can! 


tide of battle by means of specially constructed motor 
tractors. The “field kitchen” that brought hot food 
to the front line trenches trundled along at the tail 
of a motor truck. Tens of thousands of motor trucks 
made up the transport trains that brought ammuni¬ 
tion and supplies from the railroad bases to the 
fighting lines. And when the fighter was struck 
down, it was the motor ambulance that carried him 
back to the base hospital. 

But the automobile could fight as well as scout, 


attack as well as provide and minister; for the mighty 
“tanks” that charged irresistibly over barbed wire 
entanglements, trenches, and concrete fortifications 
were automobiles—mighty children of the American 
farm tractor of the “caterpillar” type. And if the 
automobile has rather brusquely shouldered the 
horse out of many of his old occupations, it has 
repaid him in some measure; for who can estimate 
the number of horses that were saved from suffering 
and slaughter by the use of the automobile in war? 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

275 





The First Automobiles 


[automobile 

An automobile is simply a car that moves of itself 
on an ordinary road, carrying passengers or freight. 
The freight automobiles are known in America as 
“motor trucks,” in England as “lorries,” and in 
France as “camions.” The great majority of auto¬ 
mobiles are run by gasoline engines, although there 
are many electric cars and a few driven by steam. 

The speed of the automobile has been developed 
far beyond the limit of practical value. Nearly all 
of the larger cars are able to travel from 50 to 60 
miles an hour, which is enough for the most extreme 
emergency. Yet racing machines have more than 
doubled this speed. 

Although the automobile has developed only 
within a few years from a rattling untrustworthy 
“ horseless carriage” into the swift sleek silent machine 


Haynes, and a Benz, the last an imported German 
car. It was two years later before any cars were 
purchased. The beginning of automobile manu¬ 
facture in this country is claimed by Alexander 
Winton, of Cleveland, who in 1898 built and sold 
four cars. 

The electric automobile came earlier than the gas 
car. In 1891 the first electric automobile was built, 
and made its appearance on the streets of Chicago in 
1892. “Ever since its arrival,” said the Western 
Electrician of Sept. 17, 1892, “it has attracted the 
greatest attention. The sight of a well-loaded car¬ 
riage moving along the streets at a spanking pace 
with no horses in front, and apparently with nothing 
on board to give it motion, was one that has been 
too much even for the wide-awake Chicagoan. In 


PHOTOGRAPH GALLERIES ON WHEELS 



Motor trucks were in use for all sorts of purposes in the World War. Here is a group of war photograph galleries on wheels, each 
truck with its trailer serving as dark room, laboratory, and living quarters for the men. Within a half hour from the time the aviator 
had taken views over the enemy lines, prints had been made and were in use by artillery officers in directing their fire. 


of today, the idea of a self-propelled vehicle is not 
new. More than 200 years ago Sir Isaac Newton 
thought of such a conveyance, and in 1769 Nicholas 
Joseph Cugnot, a Frenchman, made the first auto¬ 
mobile ever built—a three-wheeled steam carriage 
which actually ran a few miles on the roads of France, 
and then upset because it was too heavy to take a 
sharp turn at three miles an hour! 

Some Early Automobiles 

It is difficult to decide who invented the first gaso¬ 
line-propelled automobile. Perhaps the chief credit 
belongs to Gottlieb Daimler, a German, who by 1884 
had developed the Daimler engine which was applied 
to automobiles. France contributed most to the 
automobile’s early development. In the United 
States it is claimed that Charles E. Duryea of Penn¬ 
sylvania constructed a gasoline automobile in 1892. 
The earliest successful American automobile of this 
type, now in the Smithsonian Institution at Washing¬ 
ton, was constructed by Elwood Haynes, of Kokomo, 
Ind., in 1893-94. In 1896 there were but four gasoline 
cars in the United States—a Duryea, a Ford, a 


passing through the business section, way had to be 
cleared by the police for the passage of the carriage.” 

The difficulties encountered in the early days in 
inducing capitalists to invest money in automobile 
manufacturing is well illustrated in the story of a 
young inventor who, during his apprenticeship in an 
electric light plant, worked and studied and finally 
evolved a car which he believed could sell for a 
popular price. After many discouraging failures he 
finally succeeded in interesting a stove manufacturer, 
who agreed to lend him $27,000 provided he would 
not tell anyone. “I can’t afford to let anyone know 
I am lending you this money,” said the stove manu¬ 
facturer, who knew what ridicule would follow if it 
became known that he had risked his money in so 
foolish a scheme. His investment in the young 
inventor’s idea, however, returned a dividend as high 
as 1,300 per cent in a year. Today the name of that 
struggling inventor is known wherever cars are sold; 
it is that of Henry Ford. 

The first automobile had . many faults, but an 
improvement was founded on every mistake and it 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

276 







| Where the Motors are Made 


was not long before the motor car began to find itself. 
Today the automobile industry in the United States 
ranks sixth in the list of the nation’s industries. 

The great step forward in the manufacture of 
automobiles has been the standardization of parts. 
If the hundreds of manufacturers who sprang up had 
produced cars with different sizes of standard parts, 
requiring owners of cars with which something has 
gone wrong to wait indefinitely for a particular device 
used by a certain company, the nation would never 
have been so completely “ automobilized” as it is 
today. This standardization does not extend to the 
bodies of the cars, but engines are so standardized 
as to insure quantity production at cheapened cost. 

A Glimpse of the Factory 

An automobile factory is a big place, for thousands 
of parts made of many different materials must be 
manufactured with much complicated machinery. 
The various pieces must be very accurate, some to the 
thousandth of an inch. Every detail of construction 
has a separate department—the machine shops, 
wood-working department, paint rooms, upholstering 
rooms, etc. The complicated engines, as delicately 
built as a watch, are put together and rigidly tested 
in another department. Every big factory has 
a well-equipped laboratory, where scientific research 
is carried on and new possibilities in carbureters, 
engines, rubber, and gasoline are revealed. 


automobile| 

The automobiles are put together by “progressive 
assembling,” and no one who has seen this wonderful 
demonstration of efficiency can ever forget it. First 
the two long side bars are fastened together by the 
cross pieces, and this bare frame is placed on a moving 
platform which is drawn steadily forward along a 
chain or belt. Its route leads past a long stockroom, 
and as it passes, workmen attach the various parts, 
sometimes jumping on board and working until their 
particular piece is in place—the springs, brackets to 
support the running boards, a muffler, the axles, and 
many other things. A spray of naphtha cleans the 
car of any dirt or grease it may have accumulated, 
and a coat of paint is then sprayed on. The frame 
disappears into the drying room, and when it reappears 
on the other side it gets a coat of varnish and dis¬ 
appears again into a hot room to dry. When it has 
cooled it resumes its journey. At a definite point 
the engine is swung up from below, or comes along 
another track and is fastened securely in place in 
the frame, which is now called a chassis. ' The ignition 
system is installed, the wheels are slipped in place, 
the body swings down from above, and the tires, 
lamps, and clock suddenly appear, ready to be 
attached. Every few yards an inspector tests the 
work done. Finally it comes to the end of the track, 
a completed automobile. Fill its tank with gasoline 
and it is ready to start across the continent. 



H o w an Automobile bVo r k s 


'T'HE modern automobile is a marvel of compact 
1 arrangement. Everything that clever engineers 
can do to make it dependable and easy to run has been 
done. While its mechanism may seem at first extraor¬ 
dinarily complicated, once you have learned the pur¬ 
pose of each of the parts, you will realize how 
essentially simple is the general plan. 


Let us now, with the help of the pictures, master 
the details of this wonderful machine and see what 
happens when the driver begins to work his levers. 

1. THE AUTOMOBILE’S “BRAIN CENTER” 

The man who drives an automobile must think of 
nothing else. He has enough to do. His hands and 
feet are instantly ready and alert, and his attention 


contained in the Eaty 


Reference Fact-Index 


277 


a t 


the 


end of this 


work 
























AUTOMOBILE 


How Motors do Their Thinking^ 



wind-shield 


GASOLINE 

jCONTROL 


LgOSiTROL' 


AMMETER 


SHIFT \ 

LEVE( ^\ . 4 J 
CLUTCH ^ p 

JOOT br/(ke 


STARTER 


feRATOR 


should never be off the appliances on which the safety 
of the car depends. He has before him, as he sits in 
his seat, the steering wheel, the lever for changing 
speeds, the brakes, the delicate mechanism for in¬ 
creasing the flow of gasoline, and the pedal controlling 
the clutch. It is enough for any 
man to do with the lives of many 
people in his hands. 

There are two brakes—one 
worked by hand and one by the 
foot. The foot brake usually 
works directly on the outside of 
the brake drums, which are fas¬ 
tened to the rear wheels. This is 
the brake for ordinary use and by 
its friction it simply slows down 
the driving wheels. The hand 
brake or “emergency brake” us¬ 
ually acts on the inside of the 
same brake drums, and is adjust¬ 
ed so that when it is pulled back 
hard it will lock the wheels and 
prevent them from turning at all. 

This is used when it is necessary 
to stop very suddenly or when the 
automobile is to be left standing. 

In some automobiles one or the 
other of these brakes may work 
upon the driving shaft instead of 
upon the wheels. 

The gear-shift lever for chang¬ 
ing speeds is moved backward or 
forward or to the sides, each 
motion bringing a different set of 
cogwheels into position between 
the shaft driven by the engine 
and the shaft connected to the 
back wheels. As shown here, the 
gear-shift is in “neutral,” the 
engine shaft and the driving shaft 
are not linked together, so that, 
although the engine might be run¬ 
ning, the car would not move. 

The clutch pedal is a simple but 
very important instrument. It 
provides a means for disconnect¬ 
ing the engine from the driving 
mechanism while the gears are being shifted into 
place, which makes it possible to start the auto¬ 
mobile without a jerk and saves the machinery from 
sudden strains. Next to the foot brake is the 
accelerator, serving the same purpose as the gas¬ 
oline control lever on the steering wheel.' By using 
this foot control, it is possible to increase or 
decrease the flow of gasoline to the engine without 
removing either hand from the steering wheel. Next 
to the accelerator is the button controlling the self¬ 
starter, which consists of an electric motor run by a 
storage battery. This motor twirls the engine shaft 
when the driver wants to start his car, and does away 


Fig. 1. The “Brain Center” of the Automobile 


which controls the electric current for the sparks that 
explode the gasoline in the cylinders, and which also 
turns the lights of the automobile on and off; the 
ammeter, which tells the driver the amount of electric 
current the storage battery is receiving or discharg¬ 
ing; the speedometer, which is connected through the 
flexible cable beneath it to the driving mechanism, 
and which tells how fast the car is moving; the oil 
gauge, which indicates whether the lubricating oil is 
circulating properly; and, finally, the dashlight,which 
illuminates these instruments for night driving. 

On the steering wheel, besides the gasoline lever 
there is the spark-control lever which regulates the 


HORN 


with the old-fashioned method of getting out in front 
of the automobile and cranking it by hand. 

The instruments on the dashboard are as follows: 
the “choker,” with which pure gasoline can be fed to 
the engine, making it easier to start; the switch, 


STEERING 
WHEEL ^ 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 









Anatomy of the Motor 


AUTOMOBILE 


time of the explosions in the engine, 
and the button which sounds the electric 
horn. The column which supports the 
steering wheel is composed of an out¬ 
side jacket containing three movable 
tubes fitting inside one another, the 
largest and strongest connected to the 
steering mechanism, and the two smaller 
ones to the gasoline valves and spark¬ 
ing devices. 

2. THE CHASSIS AND ITS PARTS 

In this picture we look down from 
above on the chassis or frame of the 
automobile with all the essential parts 
in place. At the front we see the radi¬ 
ator, which helps to keep the engine 
cool. From the engine itself we can 
trace the “power line” to the rear wheels 
through the clutch, the gear box, the 
main drive shaft, and the differential 
which carries the revolving motion of 
the shaft into the rear axle. Connected 
to the engine on one side is the electric 
generator for charging the storage bat¬ 
tery, and the commutator and dis¬ 
tributor, which send the electric current 
to the spark plugs in each of the engine 
cylinders, timing each spark so the ex¬ 
plosions will take place in their proper 
order. On the other side of the engine 
is the self-starter, run by the storage 
battery. The battery, which is not 
shown here, usually rests under the 
floor boards or front seats of the car. 
The exhaust pipe carries the burnt 
gases from the engine through the 
muffler which deadens the sound of their 
. escape. 

Here you can see the mechanism 
which connects the steering wheel with 
the two front wheels of the automobile, 
as well as the rods which connect the 
hand and foot brakes with the brake 
shaft and drums on the rear wheels. 
The greatest care is used in the manu¬ 
facture of the framework of the chassis. 
It is made of steel specially treated to 
enable it to withstand jars and twists. 
The greatest danger to a chassis is 
“crystallization” of the metal, which 
consists in gradually acquiring brittle¬ 
ness through the constant strains and 
vibrations, just as a steel wire becomes 
brittle and breaks if it is repeatedly bent 
back and forth. 

Keeping in mind the general plan 
shown here, we will now examine the 
essential parts of the automobile and 
explain them one by one. 



RADIATOR 


SPRING 


■GEAR 
f BOX 


brake 


BRAKE 


SHAFT 


AXLE 


DIFFERENTIAL 


COMMUTATOR 
AN D 

DISTRIBUTOR 


EXHAUST 

PIPE 


SELF-STARTER 


SUPPORTS 


FOR 


RUNNING 


BOARD 


EXHAUST 


BRAKE 

DRUM 


BRAKE 

DRUM 


FRAME FOR 
SPARE TIRE 




Fig. 2. Stripped Down to “Skeleton and Muscles” 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

279 


















Jautomobile 


The Pilot at His Wheel 


3. THE STEERING 
MECHANISM 

Here we see the front part 
of the chassis with the en¬ 
gine and radiator removed, 
showing how the frame is 
supported by the springs 
resting on the front axle and 
how the steering mechanism 
works. The supports which 
hold the steering column 
rigidly in place have been 
left out, so that we can see 
the complete operation. 

The steering wheel has been 
turned to the right as in¬ 
dicated by the arrow, turn¬ 
ing the worm gear also to 
the right. This forces the 
quadrant down, and this 
motion is transferred 
through the pivot in the 
frame to the steering arm, which thus moves back¬ 
ward, drawing with it the steering rod. The other 
end of the steering rod is fastened to the knuckle 
arm, which projects from the left wheel attachment. 
The wheel, as you can see, is attached to the axle 
like a door on a hinge, this entire arrangement being 
known as the steering knuckle. As the knuckle arm 
therefore, moves back with the steering rod, the wheel 
swings on its hinge, pointing to the right. This 
motion, in turn, is transferred to the tie rod arm, which 


is also rigidly attached to the wheel part of the hinge. 
As this arm swings to the left, it pulls with it the tie 
rod, which is fastened at the other end to a similar 
tie rod arm projecting from the hinge of the right 
wheel. This wheel, therefore, is also forced to swing 


3. How the Driver Steers the Car 

and point to the right. When the steering wheel is 
revolved to the left, the whole process will, of 
course, be reversed. 

The details of the steering system vary with differ¬ 
ent automobiles, but the principles shown here apply 
to all. 

4. THE POWER PLANT 

This is the six-cylinder engine, the center of 
power, shown from the left side, and giving a better 
view of many of the important parts already noted 
i in Fig. 2. We see how 
the water pipe connects 
the hollow water-jacket 
of the engine to the radi¬ 
ator, and how the fan 
belt from the engine shaft 
drives the fan, which 
draws air through the 
radiator and sends its 
cooling blast over all the 
parts beneath the hood. 
We see also the position 
of the timing gear, which 
is connected inside the 
engine to the 12 valve 
rods (two to each 
cylinder) that move up 
and down, opening and 
closing the valves which 
admit gasoline into the 
top of the cylinders and 
let out the burned gases 
into the exhaust pipe. 
The timing gear is delicately adjusted to make 
each valve work in its proper order, just as the com¬ 
mutator is adjusted for the sparks. When the engine 
is ready for work, electric wires run from the nobs 
or posts at the top of the distributor to the 




Fig. 4. The “Heart” of the Automobile 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

280 








Keep That Engine Cool! 


AUTOMOBILE 




spark plugs (marked X) on the cylinders. The 
all-important function of the carbureter is explained 
with a picture farther on. 


INTAKE VALVE OPEN 
EXHAUST VALVE CLOSED 
GAS DRAWN IN 
®Y SUCTION 
AS PISTON 
MOVES DOWNWARD 


BOTH VALVES CLOSED 
GAS COMPRESSfD 
IN CYLINDER 
AS PISTON 
MOVES UPWARD 


Fig. 6. How the Engine Keeps Itself Cool 

5. THE COOLING SYSTEM 
We need little imagination to see the danger of a 
red-hot engine when we think of the constant fire of 
gas explosions inside the cylinders. To prevent this 
the radiator is filled 
with water, which 
is drawn through 
the lower pipe by 
a pump operated 
by the engine. It 
circulates around 
the cylinders in¬ 
side the water 
jacket and is forced 
back to the radi¬ 
ator through the 
upper pipe. In the 
simplified diagram 
shown here, the 
radiator appears as 
a number of small 
straight tubes, con¬ 
ducting the water 
downward from 
above. Actually 
these tubes are 
arranged in a much 
more intricate 
fashion and are 
covered with 
countless small 
projections and 

flanges which give the greatest possible cooling sur¬ 
face. Some automobiles are air-cooled, depending 
only on the fan and on the special cooling surface of 
the cylinders. 


When any of these cooling arrangements go wrong, 
the engine is likely to get so hot that the pistons stick 
in the cylinders. In cold weather care must be taken 
that the water in the radiator 
and around the cylinders does not 
freeze when the automobile is left 
standing outdoors, as this may 
crack the metal. 

6. THE ENGINE AT WORK 
Here we have a simplified 
diagram showing how the gasoline 
is carried to the engine from the 
tank at the rear, how it is sucked 
through the intake valves into the 
cylinders, how it is compressed, 
then exploded by the electric 
spark and how the burned gas 
escapes through the exhaust valves 
and exhaust pipe -to be expelled 
at the rear. A four-cylinder 
engine is used with the side cut 
away, each cylinder illustrating 
one of the four steps in the 
process. We see also how the 
pistons are forced up and down inside the cylinders 
and how the piston rods turn the crank shaft and 
the flywheel. We must imagine that the four steps 
shown here are repeated in rapid succession in each 


VALVES CLOSED 
SPARK FIRES 
COMPRESSED GAS 
WHICH EXPLODES 
DRIVING PISTON 


EXHAUST VALVE OPEN 
INTAKE VALVE CLOSED 
PISTON MOVES 
UPWARD DRIVING 
OUT BURNED GAS 


Fig. 6. Looking inside the Engine—the “Heart Beats” of the Automobile 


of the four cylinders, or six cylinders, or whatever 
number of cylinders the engine may have. For the 
sake of simplicity the carbureter has been omitted 
from the picture, but its place is on the gasoline feed 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


281 


contained in the Easy 
































































AUTOMOBILE 


1 \ How the Explosions are Timed *| 


pipe, where it turns the liquid gasoline to vapor 
before sending it into the cylinders. (For a complete 
account of all these operations see the article on Gas 
Engine.) 

7. WHAT THE CARBURETER DOES 

A marvelous little device is the carbureter, where 
the mixture of gasoline and vapor and air is made, 
which is to meet the spark inside the cylinders and 
explode just in time to drive the piston down and 
work the engine. Although there are many different 
types of carbureters, the general principles illus¬ 
trated in this simplified picture apply to them all. 
The liquid gasoline from the tank is fed into the 



Fig. 7. The “Lungs” of the Automobile 


float chamber, either through the simple force of 
gravity, through pressure in the tank, or through a 
vacuum suction arrangement. When the gasoline in 
this chamber reaches a certain level, the rising of 
the float automatically closes the float valve and 
cuts off the supply. The gasoline is fed through the 
needle valve to the spray nozzle, the level in the 
float chamber being so adjusted that the spray nozzle 
is constantly filled almost to the tip. 

Now, if you will look back at the last picture, you 
will see that the downward motion of the piston in 
the first cylinder on the left causes a suction through 
the gasoline feed pipe. The carbureter is attached 
to this pipe and receives this suction, which draws 
air in through the large air inlet. As this air is 
forced to go through the narrower funnel-shaped 
opening around the spray nozzle, it travels with great 
speed and draws the gasoline out through the nozzle 
in the form of a fine vapor or spray, which mixes with 
the air, making the explosive gas that is carried 
through the upper pipe to the engine cylinder. The 
throttle, which is operated by the hand lever or foot 
accelerator, as shown in Fig. 1, regulates the flow of 
air and thus determines the amount of gasoline 



Fig. 8. The Engine’s “Clock” 


that is drawn from the spray nozzle—the more 
gasoline in the mixture, the more power, up to a 
certain point. 

8 and 9. THE TIM¬ 
ING DEVICES 

Time is every¬ 
thing in an auto¬ 
mobile, and things 
must happen at ex¬ 
actly the right mo¬ 
ment. As we saw in 
Fig. 6, the whole 
operation of the 
engine depends upon 
the opening and 
closing of the valves 
at the proper instant. 

This is regulated by 
the timing gears 
shown in Fig. 8. 

These are situated 
at the front of the 
engine, whose crank shaft projects outward. As the 
crank shaft revolves, the cogwheel upon it turns the 
cogwheel on the cam shaft. This last shaft gets its 
name because it has upon it a number of cams, 
one to each valve. These cams are simply metal 
projections which revolve with the shaft, and every 
time they come around on top they push up the 
valve rod above them and open that particular 
valve. Fig. 9 shows one of these cams just as it 
has raised the inlet valve which admits the gasoline. 
The third cogwheel, shown in Fig. 8, turns the 
generator which creates the electric current. 



For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

282 














What the Gears Do 


AUTOMOBILE 



10. THE COMPLICATED CLUTCH 
The clutch is a device for disconnecting the engine 
from the rest of the driving mechanism. We have 
here the type known as the multiple-disk clutch. To 



a cone-shaped disk is thrust by the spring into a cone 
shaped hollow in the flywheel, where it locks like a 
wedge. 

The chief purpose of the clutch is to enable the 
driver while the engine is running to shift the gears 
as described in the succeeding pictures. When the 
clutch is let in slowly, it does not take a sudden rigid 
grip on the whirling flywheel, but slips a little at first, 
allowing the car to start slowly and smoothly without 
the sudden wrench which would not only be un¬ 
comfortable to the passengers, but which might injure 
the driving mechanism. 

11. THE GEARS—NEUTRAL 

Because the gasoline engine gets its power from 
a series of quick explosions in its cylinders, it must 
always run at a comparatively high speed. If the 
engine, therefore, were always connected through the 
clutch directly to the drive shaft, it would be impos¬ 
sible to run an automobile slowly, which means that 


Fig. 10 A. When the Clutch is Out 

understand its operation we must realize that the 
engine shaft at the left is entirely unattached to the 
clutch shaft at the right, the point where they are 
divided being just to the right of the flywheel. This 
makes it possible, when the clutch is out as in Fig. 10 
A, for the engine shaft, the flywheel, and the pro¬ 
jecting rods supporting the metal rings to revolve 
without turning any part of the clutch shaft or its 
attachments. In other words, all the parts which 
appear light in the picture can move independently 
of all the dark parts. The 
dark disks are attached 
to a sleeve which can slide 
a short distance back and 
forth on the clutch shaft. 
They fit between the white 
rings sandwich-f a s h i o n, 
without touching them. 
This is the situation when 
the driver has pushed the 
clutch forward with his 
foot. 

But when the clutch 
pedal is released, the 
strong spring inside the 
sleeve forces the sleeve 
forward, pushing the edges 
of the dark disks into con¬ 
tact with the white rings. 
They clutch one another 
by the power of friction 
and the motion of the 
engine shaft is thus trans- 
The faces of the disks 



Fig. 10 B. When the 
Clutch is In 


mitted to the clutch shaft., 
and rings are usually covered with leather to make 
their grip stronger. Figure 10 B shows how all this 
takes place in an actual clutch, which you will 
observe is more close fitting than our diagram. 

Many cars have clutches of the cone type, in which 

contained in the Easy Reference 



Fig. 11. The Gears in Neutral 


it would be impossible to start it, for it must neces¬ 
sarily start slowly and gain speed later. To over¬ 
come this difficulty the gear system is used, the chief 
principle of this system being that, when two cog¬ 
wheels are meshed or linked together, the large 
cogwheel will r evolve more slowly than the small one. 
If the large one is twice as big around as the small 
one, it will make only one turn while the small one 
makes two turns. This, as we shall see, makes it 
possible to have the engine shaft revolve rapidly, 
while the drive shaft revolves slowly. 

Let us first look at Fig. 11, which shows the con¬ 
struction of the automobile gear-box. At the left we 
have the shaft coming from the clutch and revolving 
at the same speed as the crank shaft of the engine. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

283 

























AUTOMOBILE 


Regulation of the Speed ] 


To it is fastened the small cogwheel A. Beyond A, 
the clutch shaft ends, and there is no attachment 
between it and the drive shaft. Below we see the 
counter shaft, on which are mounted the wheel B, 
which is always in mesh with A, and the wheels 
C, D, and E. Beside the counter shaft is the small 
reverse shaft carrying the wheel F, which is perma¬ 
nently in mesh with E. 

Upon the drive shaft are the two cogwheels F and 
X, which are called sliding gears, because they are 
able to slide back and forth. They fit down into the 
grooves of the drive shaft, however, so that when they 
revolve, the shaft must revolve with them. Finally, 
we come to the two sliding arms which are operated 
by the gear shift lever. These arms are loosely 
fastened to the round collars of the wheels X and Y, 
leaving the wheels free to revolve within their grip. 
As these arms move, they pull the sliding gears closer 
together and force them farther apart. 

As the gear box stands now, it is at “ neutral. ’’ The 
wheel A is revolving with the engine and turning the 
larger wheel B and all the other wheels on the counter 
shaft. But the wheels X and Y are at rest, and the 
automobile is standing still. 

12. THE GEARS—FIRST SPEED 

Now we come to the first move the driver makes in 
getting his automobile under way. He has pressed the 



Fig. 12. First or Low Speed 


button of the self-starter and set the engine going, and 
he has pushed in the pedal that throws out the clutch. 
He now moves the gear-shift lever into the first or low 
speed position. Fig. 12 shows us what happens in the 
gear box. The sliding arms are drawn together, mov¬ 
ing the sliding cogwheel Y forward until its teeth catch 
or mesh with the wheel D on the counter shaft. As soon 


as this happens the driver lets the clutch in again, and 
the car moves forward slowly. 

The power from the engine is now passing through 
wheels A,B,D, and F, the latter turning the drive shaft. 
The wheels C, E, F, and X are revolving idly. If you ex¬ 
amine the relative size of the first set of wheels, you will 
see why this is called the “low speed” gear. Wheel B, 
being much larger than A, revolves much more slowly. 
Wheel D, being fastened to the counter shaft with B, 
naturally revolves at the same speed. But D, in turn, 
is meshed with a much larger wheel F, so that the 
latter turns still more slowly and communicates this 
low speed to the drive shaft and the wheels. 

13. THE GEARS—SECOND SPEED 

As the automobile gathers headway, the driver 
shifts his lever into the position for second or inter¬ 
mediate speed. The sliding arms are pulled very 



Fig. 13. Second or Intermediate Speed 


close together; wheel F moves out of contact with D, 
and wheel X moves into gear with C. The power is 
now passing through the wheels A, B,C, and X. You 
will notice that C is larger than D, and X is smaller 
than F, so that the relative speed of the drive shaft 
becomes greater than in Fig. 12. In this case the 
wheels D, E, F, and F are revolving idly. 

14. THE GEARS—THIRD SPEED 
Now that the automobile is moving quite rapidly, 
the driver shifts his lever into the third or “high” 
speed position. To understand this, you must notice 
a thing we have not mentioned before. From wheel 
X there projects a slightly smaller ring or collar. 
Around the inside of this collar, as you may faintly 
see in Fig. 13, are teeth made to fit exactly over and 
around wheel A, which projects far enough beyond B 
to afford a grip. When the lever is moved into 


For any s u b j e c t not found in its alphabetical place see infor motion 




























| Trick of Turning a Corner" 


high, therefore, the sliding arms are thrust apart, 
X is pushed out of contact with C and moved forward 
until its collar slips over A. The power from the 



engine now passes directly from A to X, and the drive 
shaft revolves at exactly the same speed as the clutch 



Fig. 15. Reverse 


shaft. Once the automobile is “running on high,” the 
increase and decrease in speed is regulated by letting 
more or less gasoline into the engine. 


AUTOMOBILE | 

15. THE GEARS—REVERSE 

Perhaps, as the driver speeds along, he has 
taken the wrong road. He throws his gears into 
neutral (Fig. 11) and puts on his foot brake to stop. 
But the way is too narrow to circle about in the regular 
way. He has to back up to turn around. He throws 
out his clutch and moves the gear shift lever into the 
position for reverse. This pushes wheel Y back into 
contact with wheel F, which has been all this time 
idly revolving on the little reverse shaft. The power 
now passes through wheels A, B, E, F, and Y. Up 
to this time the clutch shaft and the drive shaft have 
always been moving in the same direction, as shown by 
the arrows. But as soon as that extra wheel F is intro¬ 
duced into the power circuit, it reverses the direction 
of the drive shaft and the car moves backwards. 

16. REAR AXLE AND DIFFERENTIAL GEAR 

Nearly everything we have seen so far, all the 
engine parts, gears, wheels, etc., are planned and 
arranged for one purpose—to deliver as much power, 
speed, and steadiness as possible to the rear wheels 
which push the automobile. In Fig. 16 we see the 
last steps in this process. All other steps have been 
shown from the left side of the automobile, but to 
get the proper view, this picture is made from the 
right side. 

The power coming out of the engine, through the 
clutch and gear box, is turning the long drive shaft. 
The end of the drive shaft enters the axle housing, 
which is cut away in the picture to show how this 
power is carried to the wheels. When the automobile 
is going ahead, the cone gear at the end of the drive 
shaft revolves as indicated by the arrow, fitting into 
and turning the bevel driving gear in the forward 
direction. This driving gear, however, is not con¬ 
nected directly with the driving wheels, but operates 
through an ingenious system of cogwheels inside the 
differential box. 

The differential gear, as it is called, is one of the 
cleverest achievements of mechanical science. Its 
purpose is to enable the automobile to turn a corner. 
Of course the front wheels, as we have seen, are really 
the ones that make the automobile turn to the right 
or left, but the back wheels have an important and 
even more difficult part to play. 

When any four-wheeled vehicle makes a turn, the 
outside wheels have to travel farther than those on 
the inside of the turn. Therefore they must revolve 
faster. Now in wagons and carriages drawn by horses 
the wheels revolve around the tips of stationary axles, 
and each wheel can move independently of the other. 
So there is no difficulty for them in turning a corner. 
This is true also of the front wheels of an automobile. 
But the back wheels cannot be allowed to turn on the 
back axle. They must be rigidly fastened to it, for 
it is from this revolving axle that they get their 
motion and driving power. 

Now, if this back axle were one solid piece running 
clear across the bottom of the car, with a wheel rigidly 
fastened at each end, it would obviously be impossible 


contained in the Eaey Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

285 



















AUTOMOBILE 


Inside that Wonder Box 




Fig. 16. The Rear Axle—the “Legs” of the Automobile 


for one of the wheels to turn faster than the other 
when making a turn. They would have to revolve 
at exactly the same speed. To solve this difficulty 
the rear axle is cut in two in the middle, and between 
these two parts, which are supported inside the axle 
housing, the wonderful differential gears work. They 
make it possible for each half of the axle with its 
attached wheel to run at different speeds if necessary, 
without however losing any power. In the picture 
the right wheel has been removed to show the “live” 
or moving axle projecting from the axle housing. 

Fig. 17. HOW THE DIFFERENTIAL WORKS 

The amazing mysteries of the differential gear 
are exposed in Fig. 17, the whole axle housing and 
differential box having been removed to show the 
moving parts inside. If you will study this picture 
closely you will learn something that many people, 
e /en those who drive automobiles, do not understand. 

The whirling drive shaft, as we saw in the last 
illustration, turns the bevel driving gear by means of 
the cone gear at the shaft’s tip. But here is something 
we couldn’t see before. Attached to the inside rim 
of the driving gear are four little pins or spokes. 
Only three of these can be seen in the picture, but you 
will notice that each of them carries a small cone- 
shaped gear, which fits into the bevel gears of the 
right and left axle. 


Here are two important things you must keep in 
mind. First, these “differential cones,” as they are 
called, are capable of revolving around their pins or 
spokes; second, the right and left halves of the “live” 
axle are not fastened to each other in the middle, but 
each is a separate rod of steel, with one of the road 
wheels rigidly fixed on one end, and one of the bevel 
gears at the other. 

When the automobile is rolling down a straight 
smooth road, the big driving gear moves forward, as 
indicated by the arrow, and of course carries around 
with it the pins with the attached cones. And, since 
these cones are meshed in the two bevel gears on each 
side of them, these bevel gears must move forward too. 
Now, when an automobile is going straight ahead, the 
strain is exactly equal on each of the two back road 
wheels. Therefore the strain will be equal also on 
each of the two axle bevel gears, so they will move 
forward at exactly the same speed, and the cones be¬ 
tween them will not revolve. 

Now let the automobile start around a corner. At 
once, the right rear wheel, having a shorter distance 
to go in making the turn, slows down. This makes 
the bevel gear on the right half of the axle slow down 
also. The big driving gear, however, must keep on 
revolving at the same speed that it gets from the 
engine. The little differential cones make this possi- 


F or any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


286 


place 


see infor motion 







STRAIGHT AHEAD 


TURNING TO THE RIGHT 




Differential cone ges.rs 
revolve to the right to 
mexke up for difference 
in speed of right a.nd 
left eodes 


Left Axle 
Beuel Gea.i 


Uft 


Differential 
Cone Gear 


Right Axle 
Bevel Gesxr 

Both &.xles turning t>X 
sajne speed - differential 
gears do not revolve 


Fig. 17. The Cogwheels that Seem to “Think” 


ble, for they begin also to revolve on their pins in the 
direction shown by the arrows in Fig. 17. In other 
words, as they are dragged forward by the big driving 
gear to which they are fastened, they have to roll 
around on the slower moving face of the right bevel 
gear. 

But remember their teeth are meshed in the left 
bevel gear as well. Therefore, as they roll around on 
the right bevel gear, they must naturally push the 
left one ahead just so much faster. This 
is exactly what is needed, for we know 
that when an automobile turns to the 
right, the left rear wheel has to move 
faster, just as the right rear wheel has 
to move slower than it did before. The 
arrows in Fig. 17 show just how each 
gear moves as the automobile turns. 

By means of these little cone gears, 
therefore, the speed of the back wheels 
of an automobile is always balanced. If 
one wheel slows down a certain amount, 
the other will move faster by just that 
same amount. 

18. CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRAKES 

Often the safety of automobile riders 
as well as of people crossing their path 
on foot depends upon the power of the brakes 
to stop the automobile in time. We saw in Fig. 1 how 
the two brakes, the service foot brake and the 
emergency hand brake, were operated from the 
driver’s seat. This picture shows how the former 
is made to grip the outside of the brake drum on 
each wheel, when the pedal is pressed down. The 
brake arm is drawn forward, turning the torsion rod, 
whose two arms draw the brake rods forward. 
These pull up the brake levers, which draw the brake 
bands tight around the drums. Since these drums 
are fastened to the wheels, the friction forces the 
whole automobile to slow down at once. The brake 
band is usually made of flexible spring metal, lined 


with leather to increase the friction. The emergency 
brake is operated through a similar set of rods and 
arms, which cause brake shoes inside the brake drums 
to expand. This creates a friction so powerful that 
it usually stops the wheels abruptly, making them 
slide over the ground without revolving. 

All who have anything to do with motor cars—and 
that means nearly everybody—should have a clear 
understanding of the principles set forth above. This 


BRAKE DRUM 
BRAKE LEVER 



PIVOTAL 

POINT 


Fig. 18. The Brakes that Often Save Lives 

may save many an awkward moment, standing by 
helpless, perhaps, when a car “breaks down” on a 
country road. But knowing the theory of an auto¬ 
mobile does hot necessarily mean that you can drive 
one properly. That art is acquired only by careful 
practice, and only those who have learned it from 
experienced teachers should ever venture to pilot a 
car through crowded streets or highways. The motto 
of every automobile driver in handling his machine 
should always be “Safety first!” Remember that 
an automobile is an instrument of tremendous 
power, and that your life—and that of others as 
well—will depend upon doing instantly the right thing 
in an emergency. 


■ t ai ne d in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this to or k 

287 



















AVALANCHE 


AZTECS 


AVALANCHE. In mountainous regions, where great 
thicknesses of snow accumulate, huge masses of ice 
and snow sometimes slide down the mountain sides, 
destroying everything in their paths. These are 
called avalanches; smaller masses, such as are com¬ 
mon in the Rocky Mountains, are called snow slides. 

The most frequent type of avalanche is that which 
occurs in spring when the snow begins to melt. 
Although these are dangerous, they are not so des¬ 
tructive to life as are the “wind” avalanches of the 
winter, because in the spring avalanches are expected 
and guarded against. In the winter, when the moun¬ 
tain sides are piled with loose dry snow, any slight 
disturbance, such as accompanies blasting, or even 
the wind, may start a great mass of snow towards the 
valley. In the summer “ice” avalanches sometimes 
occur. These are really parts of glaciers that have 
become loosened from the larger mass, and fall or 
slide down a steep slope. 

Avalanches carry trees, rocks, houses—everything 
that comes in their paths. Large forests planted on 
the mountain slopes sometimes break their force. 
Heavy walls sometimes are built as a protection. 
Aza lea. In April and May the fringy clustered 
blossoms of this beautiful flowering shrub clothe our 
low eastern mountains with a vivid mantle of purple, 
flame-color, rose-pink, or white. Hillside and open 
woodland glow with their fragrant masses. While 
most species seek 
dry, sandy, or rocky 
soil, the pink azalea, 
or “wild honey¬ 
suckle” grows in 
low wet places along 
the eastern coast, 
and in swampy 
thickets as far west 
as Illinois and 
Texas. This plant 
is called nudiflora 
(naked), because 
often the flowers 
burst into bloom 
before the leaves 
have appeared. It 
is especially loved 
by small boys who 
eat the juicy growth 
that hangs among 
its blossoms. Closely 
related to the pink azalea, and found in the same 
places, is the clammy azalea, a shrub from two to 
ten feet tall, with fragrant white blossoms appearing 
in early summer. 

Our hot-house and garden azaleas have been 
cultivated from wild shrubs that grow in the hilly 
regions of China, Japan, and the countries bordering 
on the Black Sea. Perhaps the most superb of all 
is the Ghent azalea, bred by a Belgian horticulturist. 
“Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose; its 


dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and ver¬ 
milion, are always a fresh revelation of color. They 
have no parallel among flowers, and exist only in 
opals, sunset skies, and the flush of autumn woods.” 
It is not surprising that this beautiful plant is the 
national flower of Belgium. 

The azaleasarescarcely separable from the rhododendrons. 
Flowers one and one-half to two inches in diameter with five 
regular creased lobes spreading out from a long, narrow 
corolla which is cupped in a small five-parted calyx; one 
pistil and five long curved pink stamens. Shrub from two 
to six feet high, branched near the top. The blossoms grow 
in round-topped clusters on the end of these branches. 
Leaves long, oval, and tapered at either end, with hairy 
margins; usually growing in clusters on the stalk. Scientific 
name of pink azalea, Azalea nudiflora; of clammy azalea. 
Azalea viscosa. 

AZORES ( a-zorz '). Midway between North Amer¬ 
ica and Europe lie the nine islands called the Azores, 
scattered out on the Atlantic Ocean in a line 400 miles 
long. Flores, the island farthest west, is only 1,300 
miles from Cape Race, Newfoundland. St. Michael’s 
Island, at the other end of the group, is 850 miles 
from the coast of Portugal, the mother country of the 
Azores. The half-way station thus provided was 
used by the American navy seaplane which made 
the first air trip across the Atlantic in May 1919. 

These picturesque islands are of volcanic origin 
and still suffer frequently from earthquakes and 
eruptions. In 1522 the town of Villa Franca was 
buried with 6,000 inhabitants. The mild climate 
and fertile soil, however, produce luxuriant vineyards 
and orchards, rich open pastures, and wonderful 
gardens. The surrounding waters are filled with 
innumerable fish. 

The Azores were discovered in 1431 and were at that time 
uninhabited, though coins were found bearing the stamp of 
ancient Carthage. Area of the nine islands, 922 square 
miles; highest point, Pico Mountain on the island of the 
same name (7,612 feet); principal cities, Ponta Delgada, 
Angra, and Horta; population, about 240,000. 

Az tecs. Never perhaps in the world’s history has 
a race more difficult to understand been discovered 
than the Aztecs, who lived in central Mexico at the 
time America was discovered. When bold Cortez 
with his Spaniards in 1519 reached the valley where 
Mexico City lies, they found in the midst of a lake 
an island-city of high towers, temples, and palaces, 
all white and glittering in the tropical sun, and across 
the causeways which connected it with the shore 
streamed busy throngs of brown-skinned people. 

This was the city of Tenochtitlan (ta-ndch-tet-lan '), 
where lived the great Montezuma, king of the Aztecs 
and emperor of the Nahua nations, whose rule 
extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the Cordilleran 
Mountains, and far into the south toward what today 
is Guatemala. The civilization there was as far 
superior to that of the buffalo-hunting Indians of the 
North American plains and forests as was the civiliza¬ 
tion of Rome to that of the invading barbarians from 
northern Europe. 

Indeed, the Aztec state resembled the ancient 
Roman Empire in many ways. Tenochtitlan was 



The Azalea 


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[ Splendor of the Aztec State 



AZTECS 



Ut the buildings of the ancient Aztecs few remains exist, so thorough was the destruction wrought by Cortez and his men. But 
we can get an idea of the superb structures of the Aztec builders from the many ruins of Maya architecture still standing in Yucatan, 
for the Mayas bore many striking resemblances to the Aztecs in art and customs. This is a picture of the so-called Nunnery or 
Palace at Chichen-Itza. Elaborate carved work embellishes the entire facade. In the center is the figure of a god. 


the center of a powerful trade system, with roads 
stretching to distant provinces. Commerce was 
protected by a large standing army commanded by 
the caciques or provincial 
governors, whose duty 
was also to collect the 
tribute levied on con¬ 
quered tribes. The 
wealth which poured into 
the capital was used in 
great part to beautify the 
city, to spread culture 
and education, and to 
encourage the arts of 
poetry and painting. 

Montezuma, who lived 
in great splendor sur¬ 
rounded by his nobles 
and served by thousands 
of slaves, maintained 
beautiful gardens and 
menageries filled with 
rare flowers and animals. 

On the lake and in the 
canals which cut through 
the city were strange 
“floating islands” made 
of earth supported on a 
network of branches and 
water grass. These were 
towed from place to place 
by canoes. On these islands were grown many of the 
valuable herbs and spices used by the Aztec cooks 
and the Aztec doctors. 

Montezuma is said to have kept a thousand men 
constantly employed in cleaning and sweeping the 


streets and in scrubbing the walls of the temples and 
palaces until they shone with that dazzling whiteness 
which so amazed the Spanish explorers. 

Among the Aztecs were 
expert stone cutters and 
jewelers, skilled potters, 
carpenters, architects, 
and weavers. The latter 
manufactured beautiful 
cotton garments, adorned 
with spun gold, rare 
furs, and the bright 
feathers of tropical birds. 

A strict and wise sys¬ 
tem of laws and courts 
protected the common 
citizens and even the 
slaves from many forms 
of injustice. Crimes and 
disorder were severely 
suppressed. Young men 
who became intoxicated 
or who squandered their 
fathers’ money were put 
to death. 

From the very cradle 
children were taught 
courtesy and self-control. 
The speech used by the 
Aztec father when send¬ 
ing his son out into the 
world contains advice which might well be given today. 
“Revere and salute thy elders,” he said, “and never 
show them any sign of contempt. Console the poor and 
unfortunate with kind words. Do not talk too much 
and never interrupt others. Eat not too fast and 


THE GREAT AZTEC CALENDAR STONE 



The most valuable relic of the vanished Aztec culture is this huge 
Calendar Stone, weighing over 20 tons, discovered in 1790 on 
the site of the Tecpan or temple enclosure, which once stood on 
this site now occupied by the civic center of Mexico City. It is 
believed to have served as an altar on which human victims 
were sacrificed. In the center is the face of the Sun God. The 
concentric circles of symbols tell the Aztec myth of the creations 
and destructions of the world. 


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AZTECS 


Downfall of Aztec Power [ 


show no dislike if a dish displeases thee. When thou 
walkest, look whither thou goest so thou mayst knock 
against no one. Live by thy work, for thou shalt 
be the happier therefor. 

Never lie. When thou 
tellest anyone what has 
been told thee, tell the 
simple truth and add 
nothing thereto. Be silent 
in regard to the faults 
thou seest in others.” 

Aztec women shared in 
most of the occupations of 
the men. They were 
taught to sing and dance, 
and some even learned 
reading and writing, and 
the principles of astron¬ 
omy and astrology. And 
the astronomy of the 
Aztecs was by no means 
a crude science. They 
recognized many of the 
signs of the zodiac as 
measures of time, and 
many of their calendar 
names bore a striking 
similarity to those em¬ 
ployed by the Chinese. Their calendar dated from 
the 7th century. 

Yet over all this learning and love of beauty and 
courtesy brooded the shadow of one of the most bar¬ 
barous and horrible religions the world has ever 
known. Each year the Aztec priests sacrificed to 
their numerous gods thousands of human victims. 
And the flesh of these victims was eaten by the nobles 
and the people at gruesome cannibal banquets. 

The principal aim of the Aztec soldier in battle 
was not to kill his enemy but to take him prisoner. 
On the appointed day, the sinister beat of the immense 


war drums sounded from the top of the huge tower 
temple in the center of the city. One by onq the 
prisoners of war were led up the winding stairs around 
the outside of the temple 
and were put to death 
on the altar. 

The Aztecs refused to 
abandon this horrible prac¬ 
tice, which they claimed 
had won the favor of 
their gods and brought 
them power and greatness. 
Cortez overthrew their 
empire and the idols and 
temples, and most of the 
valuable paintings and in¬ 
scriptions telling of the 
early history of Mexico 
were utterly destroyed. 

The Aztecs came orig¬ 
inally from some country 
far to the north. It has 
been suggested that they 
may have been related 
to some of the races whose 
descendants now live in 
Arizona and New 
Mexico. They founded 
the city of Tenochtitlan about 1325, on the spot 
occupied earlier by the lost civilization of the 
Toltecs. With other Nahua tribes, which is the name 
given to the whole group of invaders from the north, 
the Aztecs formed a confederacy, later known as the 
Aztec Confederacy. In this they soon gained the 
upper hand, subjecting the other tribes to a tyran¬ 
nical rule. It was largely through the assistance of 
rebel divisions of the Aztec empire that the Spaniards 
were able to overthrow the Aztec power. The 
Indians living in the region around Mexico City today 
are largely descendants of the ancient Aztecs. 


THE AZTEC GOD OF THE WINDS 



This is a picture of the Aztec God of the Winds, one of the minor 
deities of the ancient Mexican mythology. Such pictures as 
this make up the many interesting “books” which the Aztec 
priests prepared to record religious festivals and legends and 
historical events. They had not progressed beyond picture¬ 
writing of this crude sort when their civilization was destroyed 
by the coming of the Spaniards. 



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290 


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Of course you know that’s a little king in the cradle—all boy babies are; but probably you don’t know 
that the beautiful woman with that mother love-light in her eyes is Lady Patricia Ramsay, formerly 

Princess Patricia of Connaught. 


Being a GOOD MOTHER to BABY 


B ABY CARE. In one of the dirtiest and noisiest 
and most crowded parts of a big city lies what is 
called the Little Mother’s School, in which little girls 
and big girls are taught how to care for their baby 
brothers and sisters. The little girls and big girls 
come pretty early in the morning, for the weather is 
hot and one of the first things they are taught is to 
keep the baby off the street during the hottest part of 
the day. Suppose we pay a visit to this school. 

Do you notice how happy and well the babies look 
who have been coming here for a week or two? Some 
of the new babies who have come this morning for the 
first time look so hot and unhappy. But the teacher 
is going to tell the little mothers how to care for those 
babies, so that they also will crow instead of cry. 

“Rosina,” says the teacher to a little Italian girl 
with a very cross baby, “bring your baby here and 
let’s see what is making him cry.” 


“ He’s just cranky, teacher,” answers Rosina. “ He 
gets cranky days.” 

No Wonder the Baby Cries 

“Now everyone in the class listen carefully,” says 
the teacher. “ Here is the first thing for you to learn 
in caring for a baby. There is no such thing as a 
cranky baby. If a baby is cross and crying it is a 
sure sign that something is the matter. Too much 
or too little food, too much or too little clothing, 
bunchy clothes that make a lump under his little soft 
back, wet clothes that make him uncomfortable, too 
little fresh air or too much wind or sun in his face, 
too much lace and trimming on the baby’s clothes or 
not enough fresh clean ones, all make a baby ‘ cranky,’ 
as people say. Put yourself in the baby’s place and 
see if you wouldn’t be cranky, too.” 

“Teacher, what is it, then, makes my baby cry?” 
asks Rosina. Her dark little face is interested and 


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The Food and the Bath 


BABY CARE 



anxious, for her mother is a poor woman and must 
be away from home working all day, and although 
Rosina is only ten years old herself, she must be 
“little mother” to baby and to four-year-old Tony as 
well. 



“Feed the baby at regular intervals.” 


“ How often do you feed the baby?” asks the teacher. 
“Whenever he hollers!” says Rosina, frankly. 

Be Careful of that Dear Little Stomach 
“That is one reason he is cranky. Feed the baby 
only at fixed times. Unless he is sick, and the doctor 
tells you differently, you should waken the baby at 
his feeding time. He will soon get used to this and 
will awake of himself. If you don’t do this the baby 
will sleep past the right time and his meals will come 
too far apart or too close together. 

“Also be sure that all the bottles and dishes from 
which he gets his food are as clean as they possibly 
can be. Never give the baby food that has been 
standing in a warm place or where flies or dust can 
touch it. Keep the milk in a cool place and never 
take it out until you are ready to give it to the baby. 
Babies shouldn’t be fed every time they cry and they 
shouldn’t be taken up just because they cry to be 
taken up.” 



“Look at his clothes, teacher; look at his clothes. 
They’re all bunched up and the lace is scratching his 
neck,” shouts one little girl. 

“That is another thing that is making baby cross,” 


said teacher. “All clothes for a baby should be as 
plain and as soft and as clean as possible. If the 
clothes are fancy they are much harder to wash and 
iron and so are not changed as often as they should 
be. Then the embroidery or lace or ruffles are sure 
to scratch the baby’s soft skin. Besides, the fancy 
clothes cost more than the plain ones, and the baby 
doesn’t have as many clean ones as he needs. If the 
dresses and petticoats are made not more than 24 
inches long they will not bunch up so easily as the 
longer ones, they will cost less for material, and they 
will iron more quickly.” 

What do you suppose the teacher is going to do with 
Rosina’s baby now? Let’s watch and see. All the little 
mothers are crowding around the table, and Rosina is 
handing the teacher a bundle. Let’s peek into it. 
Clean baby clothes! 



“She rolls up her sleeves and puts her bare elbow into the 
baby’s bath.” 


You guessed right. The teacher is going to give 
this baby a bath and teach all these little girls the 
right way to bathe their own babies. 

This is the Way to Bathe the Baby 

First, she lays out all the clean clothes. What a 
funny way she is fixing the petticoat and dress—one 
slipped inside of the other! This is so that they can 
both be put on the baby at once, for babies do not 
like to have their clothes put on and the sooner that 
part is over the better. Here comes one of the little 
girls with the baby bathtub, another carries a pitcher 
of hot water, and another a pitcher of cold. The 
teacher has a cake of pure white soap, an old blanket, 
and a soft bath towel. On one side of the table is a 
can of talcum powder, some absorbent cotton, and a 
few toothpicks. Imagine toothpicks for a baby who 
hasn’t even one tooth! 

The baby is undressed now and lies on the teacher’s 
lap wrapped in the old blanket. One of the girls 
pours the hot water into the tub and the other one 
slowly pours the cold and stirs the water around with 
her hand so that the two will be well mixed. 

What a Way to Test the Bath Water! 

“Do you know, girls,” says the teacher, “I once 
heard of a woman who said: ‘What is the sense of 


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292 
































I Avoid Too Much Petting 


BABY CARE 


testing a baby’s bath with a thermometer? If the 
baby comes out red, the water is too hot; and if he 
comes out blue it is too cold.’ Very few people really 
do have thermometers to test the baby’s bath, but I 
am going to show you a way that answers just as well 
and is lots easier on the baby than the one that woman 
used.” 

“I know how, teacher,” offers one of the girls, who 
has been there before. 

She rolls her sleeves above her elbow and puts her 
bare elbow into the baby’s bath. If the water feels 
neither too hot nor too cold to her elbow, it is just 
right for the baby. That is certainly easy to re¬ 
member and easy to do. 

Now the baby’s head and face are washed and 
well rinsed and dried while he lies, wrapped snug 
and warm, on the teacher’s lap. Next the soap is 
rubbed with a soft cloth all over the little body. 
Now is the time for the swim! 

Do you notice how the baby is 
held when he is slipped into the 
tub to be rinsed? The teacher 
keeps her left hand under him 
and his back is leaning against 
her arm all the time that he is 
in the tub. Of course with a 
baby who is old enough to sit 
alone this is not necessary, but 
the back of a little baby is so 
weak that you must be very 
careful. 

Now, You See, the Baby Crows 

Now he is lifted—crowing and 
not crjing by this time—onto 
the blanket again, and the bath 
towel is laid over him and he is 
patted dry. 



“Never rock the baby to sleep.” 


“Never rub a baby dry,” advises the teacher. 
“ Pat with the towel until he is well dried, and then 
powder all the little creases and folds of his skin.” 

Then comes the dressing of the baby. If a flan¬ 
nel band is used, it is made of a piece of torn flannel 



which is left unhemmed so that there are no hard 
edges to hurt the baby. The teacher holds her hand 
underneath while she is pinning this around the 
baby’s abdomen, so that she will 
not stick him or pin the band 
too tight. Then the little shirt is 
put on—one of the kind that has 
no buttons but fastens by means 
of two bands brought around and 
pinned at the back. The diaper, 
folded smoothly, is pinned to this. 
Now the stockings are put on and 
pinned smoothly to the diaper to 
keep the stockings up and the 
diaper down. Of course safety 
pins are always used in pinning 
anything about a baby. 

Notice how the dress and pet¬ 
ticoat, one inside the other, are 
now put on over the baby’s feet 
instead of his head. This does 
not bother the baby so much and 
keeps him happy and smiling after his bath. 

And Don’t Forget the Toothpicks! 

At last we see what the teacher is going to do with 
those toothpicks we were so anxious about. The 
ends of four of these are well wrapped in cotton, and 
very gently the teacher cleans the baby’s nostrils and 
the outer parts of his ears, using a fresh toothpick 
and cotton for each ear and each side of the nose. 
Nothing must ever be put in the ear itself except 
by the doctor’s orders. 

Just hear Rosina’s baby crow and watch him wave 
his little fat hands! And all the girls want to play 
with him now and tickle the soles of his little feet 
to see him laugh. But the teacher says: 

“If you want to have a happy contented baby, 
don’t play with him. That sort of play makes him 
tired and nervous and cross. Let him alone right 
after his bath or feeding and he will go to sleep 
by himself and wake up bright as a dollar. Give 
him plenty of fresh air at all times. In hot weather 
take him out in the early morning or after the sun 
goes down, and in windy or very cold weather keep 
the top of his carriage down so that the wind will 


Schedule of the Baby’s Hours 


6:30— 

7:00 a. 

m. 

Feeding 

7:00— 

9:00 a. 

m. 

Asleep or 
awakeinbed 
or carriage 

9:00— 

9:30 a. 

m. 

Bath 

9:30— 

10:00 a. 

m. 

Feeding 

10:00— 

12:30 p. 

m. 

Sleep 

12:30— 

1:00 p. 

m. 

Feeding 

1:00— 

3:00 p. 

m. 

Sleep 

3:00— 

5:00 p. 

m. 

Awake 

5:00— 

5:30 p. 

m. 

Preparation 
for bed 

5:30— 

6:00 p. 

m. 

Feeding 

6:00— 

10:00 p. 

m. 

Sleep 

10:00— 

10:30 p. 

m. 

Feeding 

10:30— 

6:30 a. 

m. 

Sleep 


The above plan for a day for a baby under 
six months will usually fit into the plans of 
the average family._ The hours may be 
changed to suit the individual mother, but 
the important thing is to stick closely to 
whatever plan you choose. 


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BABY CARE 



BABYLON 


not blow in his face. If he is well wrapped up and 
protected from the wind he can sleep in his carriage 
out on the porch even in winter. And please don’t 
rock or wheel him to sleep, 
because he will sleep better 
if he is left alone and won’t 
get into the bad habit of 
waking up at night to be 
rocked. And never, never, 
never give him any soothing 
syrup or other medicines with¬ 
out the doctor’s orders; or 
feed him tea, coffee, pickles, 
and other things which are 
all right for grown-ups but 
are very bad for babies.” 

And now the School for 
Little Mothers is over for today, and Rosina takes 
her sleepy, happy baby home for his nap. The other 
girls take their babies home to bathe them and make 
them comfortable, and we and the teacher have the 
room to ourselves. 


Get out a pencil and some paper and we can copy 
the things that she has written on the blackboard 
for the girls, for these lists of books and rules may 

help us some day when we 
have the baby to care for 
while mother is away. 
Besides, mother might like 
to see what you learned from 
your visit to the School for 
Little Mothers. 

The following books on baby 
care will be found useful: ‘Pre¬ 
natal Care’ and ‘The Care of the 
Baby’—two excellent pamphlets 
published by the United States 
Child Welfare Bureau, Wash¬ 
ington, D.C., and sent free on 
request. Many state Boards of 
Health — especially the one of Minnesota (Minneapolis, 
Minn.)—publish for free distribution excellent booklets on 
the feeding and care of children. The following can be 
ordered from any bookdealer: ‘The Care and Feeding of 
Children’, by Emmett Holt, M.D. ‘The Care of the Baby’, 
by J. P. C. Griffith, M.D. 



‘Never give him any medicine without the doctor’s orders” 


Three part-wool shirts (second size) 
Three part-wool petticoats (Gertrude 
style) 

Eight slips or simple dresses 
Four pairs part-wool stockings 
Four outing flannel or thinner night¬ 
gowns 


LAYETTE FOR THE BABY 
Two long wrappers 
Two short knitted or flannel sacks 
One coat • 

One hood in winter, or two in summer 
Four to six small cotton blankets 
Three flannel binders, torn 20 by 6 
inches and left unhemmed, or four 


knitted binders. (Many doctors 
now advise leaving off the binder 
entirely after the first four weeks.) 

Forty-eight or more diapers, torn 18 
by 36 inches or 20 by 40 inches. 
Birdseye diaper cloth is best. 


Babylon. What London and Paris and New 
York are to the modern world, the city of Babylon 
was to the ancient. It was the capital of ancient 
Babylonia, situated on the Euphrates River about 
70 miles south of the present Bagdad. Babylon was 
one of the oldest of cities, as we find it mentioned in 
records now more than 5,000 years old (about 
3800 b.c.). But during the first thousand years of 
its known history, it was a mere village and played 
little or no part in the history of the region. 

At the height of its glory Babylon was one of the 
greatest and most magnificent cities in the world. 
It was built in the form of a square, and was enclosed 
with brick walls of great height and thickness, de¬ 
fended by numerous towers. Its temples and palaces 
were adorned with glazed bricks and tiles picturing 
scenes from Babylonian history and religion. The 
“hanging gardens” of Babylon, built in terrace form 
and supported on arches which rested upon other 
arches, were one of the seven wonders of the world. 
In later days the name Babylon became a synonym 
for worldliness, luxury, and vice. 

But Babylon was noted also as a seat of learning, 
education, and art. Excavations on the site by 
European scholars have revealed rich art treasures 
and many other interesting objects. Among these 
are the remains of a schoolhouse more than 4,000 
years old—from the time of King Hammurabi. The 
building consisted of a number of rooms, with walls 
of sun-baked brick, built about an open courtyard. 


On the floor were still lying the clay tablets of the 
pupils, with the exercises which they wrote on them 
more than 4,000 years ago. 

What was school like in those long-ago days? 
The principal study was learning to form the wedge- 
shaped characters which we call cuneiform ( cii-ne 
i-form) writing. It was necessary for the Babylonian 
boy to master three or four hundred different signs, 
instead of the few signs which make up our alphabet. 
Each pupil was given a tablet covered with soft clay, 
on which he wrote with a reed stylus. When the 
tablet was filled he could smooth out the marks with 
a flat stick or stone, or could make himself a new 
tablet with a fresh ball of clay. 

In learning to write the pupil first made long rows 
of single wedges in three positions—horizontal, 
vertical, and oblique. When he could make the 
single wedges neatly, the master set him to work on 
the wedge-groups which form the signs themselves. 
Then he undertook words and phrases, and finally 
whole sentences and quotations. 

The art of writing was very highly valued by these ancients. 
One of their proverbs reads: ‘‘He who shall excel in tablet- 
writing shall shine like the sun.” 

Babylon became the capital of all Babylonia about 2350 
b.c. Various Assyrian kings attacked and conquered it, and 
in 689 b.c. its walls, temples, and palaces were razed to the 
ground because of a revolt against Assyrian Tule. The city 
was soon rebuilt, however, and flourished for a time under 
independent rule. It rapidly declined when conquered by 
the Persians (538 b.c.). In 275 b.c. the remaining inhabi¬ 
tants were removed to a new city called Seleucia. 


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| The Cradle of Civilization 



BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIaI 


EMPIRES that FLOURISHED WHEN the 
WORLD WAS YOUNG 


"DABYLONIA AND AS- 
13 SYRIA. Scholars are 
unable to tell us whether 
civilization first arose in 
Egypt or in that part of 
the valley of the Tigris 
and Euphrates rivers of 
western Asia which we call Babylonia. At all 
events, here lay one of the earliest cradles of 
civilization. 

Long before 3000 b.c., the predecessors of the an¬ 
cient Babylonians (called Sumerians) were living in 
tiny city-states along the lower course of the twin 
rivers, in small towns built of sun-dried bricks. They 
irrigated their barley and wheat fields by extensive 
canals, and they wrote letters and kept records on 
tablets of baked clay by means of their curious 
wedge-shaped “cuneiform” writing. They used a 
system of counting by 60’s instead of by 100’s, from 
which has come our division of the hour into 60 


around it, and the period 
b.c. is 

known as the Age of the 
Sumerian City King¬ 
doms. The inhabitants 
had come from what are 
now the mountains of 
Persia, to the east, and apparently were not related 
to any of the groups of people that we now 
know. The petty states were constantly warring 
with one another. They also had an outside enemy 
to meet in the wandering Semitic tribes of the 
Arabian desert to the west. Finally one of these 
Semitic chieftains from the desert, named Sargon, 
proved too strong for the Sumerians, and made him¬ 
self master of the whole plain. 

Sargon (about 2750 b.c.) was the first great leader 
in history and the first to build up a great nation. 
His kingdom soon reached from the Persian Gulf to 
the Mediterranean Sea, and gradually his nomadic 


RE AT sculptured slabs of stone and glazed-brick 
^ pictures of lion-hunting kings, as well as whole 
libraries of baked clay tablets filled with the literature 
and learning of far-off times, attest the greatness of the 
civilization which flourished 5,000 years ago in the valley 
of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers — where legend 
locates the site of the Garden of Eden. 


3050 to 2750 


THE ROYAL RESIDENCE OF AN ASSYRIAN KING 



Sargon II, king of Assyria, built this palace on a great elevated platform covering 25 acres, with inclined roadways on which he could drive 
up his chariot from the streets of the city below. Numerous courts furnished light to the surrounding rooms and halls. Such temple towers 
as that behind the largest court developed into the spires we see on churches today. 


minutes and of the minute into 60 seconds. In the 
center of the Plain of Shinar (as Babylonia was then 
called) rose a great tower on a temple, which is 
regarded as the original Tower of Babel and the 
remote ancestor of our modern church steeples. 

The Dawn of Civilization in Babylonia 
Each one of the little towns of the Plain of Shinar 
in that early day owned the land for a few miles 

contained in the Easy Reference 


followers dropped their unsettled life and took up 
fixed abodes in the plains. They adopted the civil¬ 
ization of their former enemies, gaining new arts of 
peace and of war. They learned to make helmets of 
leather and copper, which are the earliest known 
examples of the use of metal for protection in war. 
From this humble beginning evolved the armor of 
the medieval knights, and our steel-clad battleships. 

Fact-Index at the end of t hit work 

295 











BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 


Earliest Code of Laws 


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HOW ASSURBANIPAL SLEW THE LIONS 


This fine example of Assyrian animal sculpture records the prowess of Assurbanipal, last of the great Assyrian emperors. The rider of 
the horse in the rear, after having planted three arrows in the body of the king of beasts, has fallen. In depicting the human figure, the 
Assyrian artists were monotonous and formal, but they were remarkably successful in their modeling of animals. 


As the kings who followed Sargon slowly weakened, 
a new desert tribe of Semites invaded the land, and 
in turn established the kingdom of Babylonia, so 
named from its capital Babylon, which now arose to 
supremacy. Under the great 
ruler Hammurabi, about 2100 
b.c., this new kingdom reached 
its height. Agriculture was 
extensively practiced, com¬ 
merce flourished, and law and 
government were highly devel¬ 
oped. 

The cities which composed 
Hammurabi’s kingdom have 
long been mere deserted 
mounds of earth and crumbled 
brick. But amid these ruins 
scholars have recently found 
over 50 baked clay tablets 
containing letters written by 
this king, and also a shaft of 
stone containing the priceless 
record of his laws. These writ¬ 
ings enable us to bridge the 
gap of more than 4,000 years 
which separates us from Ham¬ 
murabi’s time and to recon¬ 
struct in part the daily life of 
his people. 

Hammurabi’s letters contain 
orders directed to officials in 
different parts of the kingdom. 

He orders the river Euphrates 
cleared of its obstacles to river 
commerce. Taxes must be collected and delinquents 
punished. Unjust judges and corrupt officials are 
brought to justice. The spring sheep shearing is 


ordered to be celebrated as a great feast. Other 
letters deal with the temples and religion, the regu¬ 
lation of the calendar, and similar matters. 

The laws of Hammurabi, chiseled in wedge-shaped 
characters on their shaft of 
stone, are the earliest code of 
law for any people which has 
come down to us. They are 
thus a priceless aid to making 
clear the earliest life of civil¬ 
ized man, long before the days 
of ancient Greece and Rome. 
In them we find a highly devel¬ 
oped political and social sys¬ 
tem. There were three classes 
in the community—a ruling 
class of nobles and officials, a 
middle class, and slaves. Much 
attention is given to commerce, 
money, and banking, as well 
as to agriculture and the canals 
and ditches needed for irrigat¬ 
ing the soil. Justice was insist¬ 
ed on for the widow, the 
orphan, and the poor, but 
punishments were usually 
based on the principle, “an 
eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth.” For example, if a 
house fell through the crum¬ 
bling of its sun-baked bricks 
and killed the son of the 
householder, the guilty builder 
must also suffer the loss of his 
son. The position of women in these laws was a 
high one, and they are shown as frequently engaging 
in business on their own account. 


ASSYRIAN SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE 


Such brawny men with spear and bow made Assyria the 
supreme power in the East. The great armies of the 
Assyrians were the first to be equipped with weapons 
of iron and the first to use the battering ram. It was 
men so armed that “came down like the wolf on 
the fold.” 









BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 


| How Assyria Rose to Power 


THE BABYLONIAN STORY OF THE FLOOD 



On these baked clay tablets, which are among the priceless historic treasures of the British Museum, is inscribed, in cuneiform letters, the 
Babylonian story of the Flood. These clay pages are from the library of King Assurbanipal. Apparently people carried off other people’s 
books and made marks in them in those days just as they do now, for the king had a bookmark calling down the wrath of heaven on anybody 

who did any of these things to the books in his private collection. 



After Hammurabi’s death his kingdom went to 
pieces. The wild tribes again descended from the 
eastern mountains to the plains, this time bringing 
with them a strange animal which the Babylonians 
called “the ass of the East,” but which we call the 
horse. The newcom¬ 
ers failed to benefit 
from the civilization 
of Babylonia; in¬ 
stead, their ruder 
ways became the 
ways of the plains. 

Even the old Su¬ 
merian language was 
forgotten and a 
Semitic language, 
related to the He¬ 
brew of the time 
of Christ, took its 
place. Babylonian 
progress was effec¬ 
tually stopped. 

But in the north¬ 
ern part of the 
Tigris-Euphrates valley there had arisen a new nation 
called Assyria, from its chief town, Assur. At first 
Assur was a small city-state like those of Babylonia 
in the south, and it was usually under the control of its 
powerful Babylonian neighbors, from whom its people 
borrowed the calendar, writing, sculpture, and other 
improvements of civilization. By continual strife with 
their more advanced southern neighbors, and with the 
wild tribes to the north, the Assyrians gained skill in 
warfare, until they finally aspired to rule not only the 
valley of the two rivers but wider stretches to the west. 


THE MIGHTY PHALANX ON THE MARCH 


The phalanx—a massed group of fighting men—which the Sumerians first intro¬ 
duced into the art of war, was one of the secrets of their success. Here we see 
a phalanx with the king at its head, and with spears set for the charge. The men’s 
heads are protected by leather caps, and they have tall shields covering their 
entire bodies. 


Before Assyria had reached this goal, however, 
there had arisen new rivals to its power. These were 
the little kingdoms of Palestine and of Syria, situated 
in what is called “the fertile crescent” which links 
Mesopotamia with Egypt. Syria especially was rich 

in bustling cities, 
carrying on exten¬ 
sive commerce with 
all of the known 
world and spreading 
their system of writ¬ 
ing—the first system 
to make practical 
use of an alphabet— 
far and wide. For 
a time these cities 
checked the advance 
of the Assyrians, 
and it was not until 
the middle of the 
8th century before 
Christ that Damas¬ 
cus, the most power¬ 
ful city of Syria, fell. 
The conquest of the others soon followed, when, as 
the poet Byron tells us— 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. 

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. 

Assyria not only conquered Syria and Palestine, 
but her rule for a time extended even into Egypt. 
Two things contributed to this military success— 
first, the Assyrians were the first people to learn the 
use of iron weapons; and second, the organization 
of their whole state, like that of the later Prussians, 
was based on war and conquest. Like the Prussians, 


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BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 


End of Assyria’s Empire"} 


also, their rule was one of “blood and iron.” One 
Assyrian king, Sargon II (722-705 b.c.), destroyed 
the northern kingdom of the Hebrews (called Israel) 
and carried away as captives part of its people. 

Sargon’s son Sennacherib (705-681 b.c.) destroyed 
the ancient city of Babylon, and even turned the 
waters of the canal 
over its ruins. 

Sargon II had built 
for himself a pal¬ 
ace far surpassing 
anything yet built; 
the building cov¬ 
ered 25 acres, and 
the inclosure was 
large enough to 
shelter 80,000 peo¬ 
ple. But this was 
not enough for 
Sennacherib, and 
he built as his cap¬ 
ital the proud city 
of Nineveh, on the 
upper course of the 
Tigris. Within the 
palace halls were 
long stretches of 
pictures of the em¬ 
peror’s conquests, 
cut in alabaster slabs. The men in these reliefs all 
looked alike, except that the king was distinguished by 
his curled hair and beard; and they were all devoid of 
expression. But the animals on slabs picturing lion 
hunts and the like were very natural, and on the 
whole the art was far in advance of the art of the 
Babylonians. Literature advanced with art, and 
there is now in the British Museum in London a great 
collection of 22,000 clay tablets which have been 
discovered in the ruins of the ancient palace of 
Nineveh. This is the earliest library of which we 
know, and in it were religious, scientific, and literary 
works, all carefully catalogued. 

In the gardens of the palace were all manner of 
strange trees, including “ cotton trees that bore wool 
which was clipped and carded for garments.” These 
“cotton trees” are thought to be a tall species of the cot¬ 
ton plant which grows in our own southern states today. 

Interest in literature, art, and industry, however, 
was only incidental. The Assyrian Empire was still 
essentially military, and as conquest succeeded con¬ 
quest it became more so, for a large army was needed 
to keep in subjection the conquered peoples. These 
subject peoples constantly grew more restive, for not 
only were they governed and taxed by the emperor 
at Nineveh, but they were forced to help him fight 
his battles. 

The Chaldean and Persian Empires 

The end of the Assyrian Empire came in 606 b.c. A 
desert tribe called Chaldeans had been slowly creep¬ 
ing in from the south and had overrun Babylonia. 


Then they joined with the Medes, a tribe from 
the mountains to the east, and assailed Nineveh, the 
mighty city of Assyrian kings. The rejoicing of 
the world at the fall of Nineveh was expressed by the 
Hebrew prophet Nahum, who said: “All that hear 
the news of thy fate shall clap their hands over 

thee; for whom has 
not thy wicked¬ 
ness afflicted con¬ 
tinually.” Two 
hundred years la¬ 
ter the Greek his¬ 
torian Xenophon 
could not even 
learn the name of 
the crumbling 
ruins where once 
had stood the 
proud city of Nin- 
eveh (see Nin¬ 
eveh). 

The new mas¬ 
ters of the Tigris- 
Euphrates valley 
rebuilt the old city 
of Babylon and 
made it their cap¬ 
ital. Here for over 
40 years (604-561 
b.c.) ruled Nebuchadnezzar, greatest of the Chaldean 
emperors. He enlarged the city and built enormous 
walls about it to protect it from its enemies. His 
palace surpassed in beauty that of any former ruler, 
and to please his wife he constructed the wonderful 
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which the Greeks 
counted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. 
This is the Babylon described in the Bible as 
the city of the Hebrew captivity, for after one 
of their many revolts Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed 
Jerusalem and carried away the people into cap¬ 
tivity. 

Under the Chaldean or second Babylonian empire 
commerce and industry flourished, and literature and 
the arts were developed. Special progress was made 
in the science of astronomy, for the Chaldeans mapped 
out the sky into the 12 signs of the zodiac, and they 
knew the five planets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, 
and Saturn. 

But the days of the Chaldean Empire were num¬ 
bered, as Daniel told Belshazzar in the interpretation 
of his dream, and soon its lands were divided between 
the Medes and the Persians (538 b.c.). 

This was the end of the great civilization of the 
Tigris-Euphrates valley, whose checkered course 
stretched far back down the corridors of time. It is 
strange to think that we are nearer today by a thou¬ 
sand years to the fall of the Chaldean Empire than 
were the Medes and Persians of that day to the faint 
far-off dawn of Babylonian civilization, over 3,000 
years before, on the river plain of Shinar. With the 


WHERE ASSYRIA SPREAD HER EMPIRE 



On this map you can trace the story of the short-lived Assyrian empire from the days 
of its founder, Sargon II, to its greatest extent 80 years later under his grandson 
Assurbanipal (called Sardanapalus by the Greeks). 


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298 









fThose Deserts to Bloom Again 

fall of Babylonia the course of empire started defi¬ 
nitely on its westward way. 

Since that time Mesopotamia has always been 
subject to some foreign people—the Persians, Greeks, 
Romans, Arabians, or Turks. The latest chapter in 


BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 


its history was written in the World War of 1914-18, 
when British and Arabian troops wrested Bagdad 
from Turkish misrule, and again made possible 
works of irrigation and development by which the 
valley desert may once more “blossom as the rose.’’ 


Babylonian My t h s of Lif e and Death 

Tales , Resembling the Stories of Our Bible , that the 
Mothers of Babylon Told Their Children Ages Ago 


ORE than 2,000 years before Christ the 
ancient Babylonians had many quaint 
myths to explain the mysteries of life and 
death and man’s history on earth. 

These myths were doubtless still told among the 
Babylonians more than a thousand years later, when 
the Jews dwelt for 70 years as captives in that land. 




So we can find traces of these stories in the Old 
Testament, and we also have the Babylonian stories 
themselves preserved in the quaint old wedge-shaped 
characters of their records. 

The Shepherd who Soared to the Skies 

One of these Babylonian stories tells of the won¬ 
derful adventures of a shepherd named Etana 
(i a-ta'na ), who was the first of mankind to attempt to 
fly. It happened once that his flocks were stricken 
with unfruitfulness, so that no more lambs were born. 
But he learned of an herb in heaven which was the 
source of life; and to obtain this and cure his flocks 
he induced an eagle to carry him on its back to the 
highest heaven. 

The first gate was successfully passed. Then the 
eagle, bearing its shepherd passenger, mounted to 
yet dizzier heights. Its strength, however, now began 


to fail, and just as Etana neared his goal, both he 
and the eagle were hurled to earth by the jealous gods, 
and perished. 

The Man who Refused Immortality 
The mystery of death is dealt with in the story of 
the fisherman Adapa (a'da-pa), who was one of the 
first men created. While he was busy at his trade 
one day, the South-wind goddess over¬ 
turned his boat, and Adapa in a rage 
seized and broke the goddess’ wing. For 
this he was summoned before the throne 
of the Sky-god. When Adapa told of the 
mischief the South-wind had done him, 
the Sky-god excused him and even offered 
to him the heavenly bread and water of 
life. This would have made him immortal 
and destroyed death. But Adapa was 
suspicious and refused to eat or drink 
while in heaven, fearing that it was the 
bread of death and not of life. He thus 
lost both for himself and for mankind the 
precious gift of immortal life. Some 
scholars see in this Babylonian reference 
to the “bread of life” a resemblance to 
the Biblical “tree of life” planted in the 
Garden of Eden. 

Babylonian Story of the Flood 
Several Babylonian and Assyrian rec¬ 
ords tell of a great flood which once cov¬ 
ered all that land, and how a man named 
Ut-Napishtim (oot-na-plsh'tlm) and his 
family were saved by the favor of the gods. 

The deluge is represented as sent upon the earth 
as a punishment for the sins of men. Ut-Napishtim, 
the Babylonian Noah, was warned in advance by 
the god Ea, who gave directions for the building of a 
great ship with strong roof or deck, in which “the 
beasts of the field and the birds of heaven” might be 
saved along with the hero and his family.^ 

Then thunder, lightning, and rain came, with a 
hurricane which drove the waters of the deep over 
the land. After seven days the floods began to sub¬ 
side. Ut-Napishtim sent out from his ship in suc¬ 
cession a dove, a swallow, and a raven. When the 
raven came back with signs of mud on his feet, he 
knew that the land was beginning to appear. The 
ship is represented as coming to rest on the highest 
peak of eastern Kurdistan, instead of upon Ararat, as 


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BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 


in the Bible account. Ut-Napishtim is then made 
immortal by the gods. 

In its best-known form this Babylonian account 
is part of a long poem covering twelve tablets, 
found in the ruins of Assurbanipal’s palace at 
Nineveh. It is called the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” 
Ut-Napishtim tells the deluge story when the hero 
Gilgamesh visits him in a wonderful land across 
“the waters of death,” as an explanation of his per¬ 
petual youth. 

BAC CHUS. The Roman name for the mythological 
divinity whom the Greeks called Dionysus. (See 
Dionysus.) 

BACH (bd k), Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). By 
the light of the midnight moon a young boy sat copy¬ 
ing from a great manuscript music-book spread before 
him. He strained his young eyes to see the notes, and 
stopped at times to stretch and rub his cramped little 
fingers; but he made no sound. The moonlight 
passed, and with a sigh the great book was noiselessly 
returned to its shelf. The copy was then carefully 
hidden and the little copyist crept to bed. 

This 12-year-old boy was Sebastian Bach, an 
orphan. His brother, who was his guardian and 
music-master, had refused him the use of the book, 
telling him that its music was too difficult for one so 
young. But with a great music-love that would not 
be denied, the boy spent night after night secretly 
copying the coveted scores—working harm to his 
sight that resulted in blindness during his last years. 

The whole life of this German musician was filled 
with incidents that show just such devotion to his art. 
When he was a choir boy he spent all his recreation 
hours at the organ or clavier. When he was able to 
fill the position of organist, he saved and scrimped, 
and traveled many miles on foot to hear and to study 
with the greatest organists of the day. In later years, 
although his duties as choirmaster in Leipzig made 
demands that might have kept two musicians busy, 
Bach found time to compose choral, organ, and piano 
pieces that were to become “the most universal force 
in the development of music.” To the last days of 
his life, even when totally blind he dictated the choral, 
‘Herewith I Come Before Thy Throne’, the passion 
for music governed his whole life. The ‘Well-tem¬ 
pered Clavichord’ was written for the instruction of 
his sons, and some of his finest cantatas were com¬ 
posed for his wife and daughter to sing. 

In the musical life of Germany the name of Bach 
had long been known, and for six generations this 
family had furnished noted musicians. Sebastian 
Bach was recognized both as the greatest of all this 
musical line, and as one of the greatest organists and 
clavier players of the day. 

In his time he was not generally known as a com¬ 
poser, and almost a hundred years passed before his 
music was widely published and appreciated. Now 
critics find no phrase too extravagant to describe the 
place his compositions fill in the literature of music. 
Bach has been described as “the man who suddenly 


BACON, FRANCIS | 

surpassed all that had been done before him, while at 
the same time anticipating all that was to be written 
in the future.” The greatest of modern musicians 
have acknowledged their indebtedness to him. 

Bach perfected the tuning of the clavichord, as the 
early piano was called, so that a new scale could be 
commenced on any note in the octave. It was also 
Bach who first taught musicians to use all five fingers 
in playing keyed instruments. His stately chorals 
and grand choruses have'never been surpassed, and 
his orchestral music is remarkable for the richness of 
its harmonies. In Eisenach the house in which Bach 
was born has been made into a Bach Museum. 
BACON, Lord Francis (1561-1626). Next to 
Shakespeare, the greatest intellectual figure in the 
wonderful Elizabethan Age of England was Sir Francis 

Bacon, who was made 
a peer under the titles 
Lord Verulam and Vis- 
count St. Albans. 
Though a great philos¬ 
opher, statesman, and 
jurist, Bacon was not 
always a great man. 
He showed at times 
some of the baser char¬ 
acteristics of human 
nature, including in¬ 
gratitude (so it was 
charged) to his patron, 
the Earl of Essex; so 
that the poet Pope un¬ 
justly styled him “the wisest, brightest, meanest of 
mankind.” 

By birth Bacon had many advantages. His father 
was Lord Keeper of the great seal of England, and so 
his boyhood was spent at Elizabeth’s court. At 12 
he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but he re¬ 
mained there only three years, because he thought 
“the whole plan of education was radically wrong.” 
He was next sent to France with the English ambassa¬ 
dor, that he might learn “the arts of state.” 

His father’s death for a time ended all hope of 
advancement at court. Cut off from the honors 
which he had hoped to gain, Bacon then turned his 
attention to law. He was admitted to the bar in 
1582, and his success was immediate, for he was a 
convincing speaker and a sound lawyer. The poet Ben 
Jonson declared that “the fear of every man that 
heard him was lest he should make an end.” Through 
the friendship of the Earl of Essex, Bacon won 
advancement at the court. In spite of writing that 
“There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame 
as to be found false and perfidious,” he later repaid 
the earl’s kindness by helping to convict him of 
treason and to bring him to the block. 

Bacon rose rapidly to the positions of attorney- 
general, privy councilor, and lord chancellor, in the 
latter position being head of the Court of Chancery 
as well as presiding officer of the House of Lords. 



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BACON,NATHANIEL 


BACON, ROGER 



Students now recognize that he was one of the pro- 
foundest statesmen of that age, but the good advice 
which he gave King James I was usually disregarded. 

In his published essays Lord Bacon gives this 
advice: “Seek not proud riches, but such as thou 
mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, 
and leave contentedly.” But he himself was charged 
with receiving bribes in his court, and was impeached 
and convicted; he was sentenced to imprisonment 
and to pay an enormous fine, and was prohibited from 
afterwards holding a public office. Although Bacon 
proudly boasted that he had been “the justest chan¬ 
cellor that hath been” since his father’s day, he 
confessed that his punishment “was just and for 
reformation’s sake,” because the old practices which 
he had carelessly followed were bad. 

He was soon released from prison (after four days) 
and excused from paying the fine, but his exclusion 
from office continued in force. Cut off from his 
cherished career, he turned all of his attention to 
literary and scientific pursuits. He urged that in 
science men should reach their conclusions only by 
experimentation, and so is reckoned one of the found¬ 
ers of the modern “inductive” or scientific method of 
inquiry. His essays are full of shrewd, pithy, pun¬ 
gent observations, such as these: “He that hath wife 
and children hath given hostages to fortune”; and 
“ Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, 
and writing an exact man.” Bacon’s life was finally 
sacrificed to his search for truth, for while testing 
whether snow would preserve meat he took a cold 
which proved fatal. 

In the 19th century several writers sought to prove, 
on the strength of alleged “cipher” messages in 
Shakespeare’s works, that Bacon wrote those im¬ 
mortal plays; but most students of literature were 
not convinced by the evidence. 

Bacon’s principal writings are: ‘Essays’ (1597); ‘The 
Advancement of Learning’ (1605); ‘Novum Organum’ 
(1620); ‘History of the Reign of Henry VII’ (1622); and the 
‘New Atlantis’ (1626). 

BACON, Nathaniel (1642-1676). Thoughtful stu¬ 
dents of American history see in “Bacon’s Rebellion” 
of 1676 the spirit of the Revolution of a century later. 

The Virginia colony at that time was so misgov¬ 
erned by Sir William Berkeley, the tyrannical gov¬ 
ernor appointed by the English king, that the colonists 
burned with discontent, and the Indians grew bold to 
attack outlying plantations. When no official meas¬ 
ures were taken to stop the Indian outrages, Nathaniel 
Bacon, a young lawyer who had emigrated from 
London to become a planter, organized his neighbors 
and punished the guilty tribes. The obstinate and 
treacherous conduct of Governor Berkeley caused the 
movement to broaden into a struggle of the demo¬ 
cratic element among the colonists against the old 
aristocratic clique who supported the governor. In 
the course of the struggle Bacon burned Jamestown 
to the ground, and drove the tyrannical governor to 
take refuge on an English ship. 

contained in the Easy Reference 


Dying soon after, at the early age of 29, Bacon was 
never brought to trial. But Governor Berkeley 
executed a terrible vengeance upon Bacon’s follow¬ 
ers. King Charles II was emphatic in his disapproval 
of Berkeley, saying: “That old fool has put to death 
more people in that naked country than I did here 
for the murder of my father.” The affair created a 
great stir in London, and secured more respectful 
attention to the needs and wishes of the American 
colonists. 

BACON, Roger (1214?-1294?). Three hundred and 
fifty years before Sir Francis Bacon revolution¬ 
ized scientific method, the English friar, Roger 
Bacon, anticipated him in emphasizing the need 
of observation and experiment as the true basis of 
science. 

After studying at the universities of Oxford and 
Paris, Roger Bacon became a Franciscan friar and 
taught at Oxford. He was far in advance of the 
scholars of his day, for he was able to read both 
Greek and Arabic books in their original tongues. 
He believed that knowledge could be more certainly 
and rapidly advanced by experimenting with real 
things than by poring over the books of Aristotle. 
He knew something of gunpowder and the magnetic 
needle, and gave directions for constructing a tele¬ 
scope. He believed that the earth was round and 
that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing west¬ 
ward into the Atlantic. In one of his numer¬ 
ous writings he suggested the possibility of these 
modern inventions: 

“Ships will go without rowers and with only a 
single man to guide them. Carriages without horses 
will travel with incredible speed. Machines for 
flying can be made in which a man sits, and skilfully 
devised wings strike the air in the manner of a 
bird. Machines will raise infinitely great weights, 
and ingenious bridges will span rivers without sup¬ 
ports.” 

Is it surprising that to the Middle Ages Bacon’s 
knowledge seemed the result of magic? Again and 
again he was ordered by his superiors to cease from 
his writing and teaching. But in Pope Clement IV 
for a time he found a friend who commanded him to 
set forth his views in a book. 

In spite of the jealousy of his brother friars and 
superiors, and the want of funds, instruments, writ¬ 
ing materials, and copyists, Bacon now in 18 months 
produced three great books (‘Opus Majus’, ‘Opus 
Minus’, and ‘Opus Tertium’), which he sent to the 
pope. After Clement’s death, Bacon again fell into 
difficulties as a result of his attacks on the scholars 
and learning of his day; and by order of the head of 
the Franciscan order he was imprisoned for 14 years 
(1278-1292). His death followed not many months 
after his release. 

Because he was so far in advance of his time, it 
is only in our own day that Roger Bacon’s true great¬ 
ness, as one of the world’s most original thinkers, has 
been recognized. 

act-index at the end of this Work 






BACTERIA 


Work of Invisible Armies 



At top of first circle are sour milk bacteria; 
below, cream and butter makers. In second 
circle, makers of alcohol. 


HE world is filled with these 
tiny microscopic plants, which 
are at once the greatest friends and 
the greatest enemies of mankind — 
clearing the earth of its dead ani¬ 
mals and plants, aiding man in 
many of his industries, but also 
afflicting him with the deadliest of 
his diseases. 



In the first circle are the microbes that make 
vinegar; in the second, the microbes that 
make cheese. 


The GOOD AND ILL that 


BACTERIA DO 


B ACTE'RIA, Nature is in a constant state of change. 

Life is produced and destroyed, and the chemicals 
in the world’s workshop are continually combining into 
higher forms which make the bodies of plants and 
animals, and then breaking down again into the simple 
elements which form the air, the soil, and the rocks. 
The little creatures called bacteria are the chief 
laborers in this great workshop, 
performing many tasks which 
man with all his science and 
ingenuity is unable to imitate. 

For every living creature we 
can see on this earth, there 
are billions—too small for us 
to distinguish—of these bacte¬ 
ria. If we could turn our eyes 
into microscopes and observe 
the daily lives of these tiny 
beings, we should be astounded, 
not only by their vast numbers, 
but by the tremendous work 
they do. 

Under the name of “germs” 
we know certain bacteria as 
agents of disease (see Germ 
Theory of Disease). But by 
far the greater number are not 
only harmless but absolutely 
necessary to man’s welfare. No 
other living things perform 
such valuable labor as these 
active bits of vegetable life— 
for bacteria belong to the veg¬ 
etable rather than the animal 
world. It was not until the 
middle of the 19th century that 
their services, as well as their 
harmful effects, were recog¬ 
nized by scientists. Today the science of bacteriology 
is one of the newest and most important branches of 
our knowledge. 

Bacteria which Act as Scavengers 
Decay and decomposition in the bodies of plants 
and animals is caused by bacteria. When a wild crea¬ 
ture dies in the woods, its carcass soon disappears, 
returning to the soil the materials of which it is com¬ 
posed; this “putrefaction” is the work of bacteria. 


When a tree falls to the ground, it is compelled to 
yield up again the life-giving substances it can now no 
longer use; this rotting is the work of bacteria. Why 
is it that the great garbage dumps, still found near 
some cities, do not keep on increasing in size until 
they afflict the whole community with their unwhole¬ 
some influence? Because vast armies of bacteria are 
at work night and day cleaning 
up the refuse, reducing it to 
good soil and clean air again. 
Nothing can escape these scav¬ 
engers, for they are in the air, 
in the ground, in the water— 
everywhere that life is found. 

All processes of fermentation 
are due to bacteria or their 
cousins the fungi. Bacteria 
turn milk sour, and without 
their aid butter and cheese 
could not be made. They pro¬ 
duce the alcohol in wines and 
cider, and then turn that 
alcohol into vinegar (see Fer¬ 
mentation). Few things can 
resist for long the combined 
efforts of the bacterial forces. 
It has recently been discovered 
that they even besiege huge 
rocks in the deserts and crum¬ 
ble the harsh stone into fertile 
soil. 

Their most important work, 
indeed, is in the field of agri¬ 
culture. Here they solve one 
of nature’s greatest problems. 
All plants need nitrogen to 
build their living cells. The 
greatest source of nitrogen is 
the air, but the pure nitrogen of the air is a stubborn 
and unsociable substance, which is unwilling to com¬ 
bine with other substances and to do its share of the 
world’s work. Most plants are unable to seize and 
use this nitrogen in its ordinary state. But certain 
kinds of bacteria, called “nitrifying” bacteria, absorb 
it and produce the nitrogen compounds upon which 
other plants can feed (see Nitrogen). 

But nitrogen is not the only substance that is 


THE LITTLE NITRATE FACTORIES 



This is an alfalfa root on which are groups of the kind 
of bacteria that manufacture nitrates and so supply 
the soil with this necessary plant food. 


for any su bje c t 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

302 


place 


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handled by bacteria for man’s benefit. Carbon di¬ 
oxide gas is extracted by them from the cellulose fiber 
of dead plants washed into the mud of marshes and 
pools. This gas is then returned to the atmosphere, 
where with the aid of sunlight the plants can again use 
it to produce carbon for themselves and oxygen for 
animals and men. 

During this process the cellulose bacteria set free 
marsh gas,” which decomposes any substances con¬ 
taining sulphur. The sulphur is then seized by another 
set of bacteria and converted into sulphates again, in 
another spot, thus spreading these valuable chemicals 
over the earth. There are even bacteria which carry 
iron from place to place in the same way. 

Certain bacteria have the power to absorb light and 
produce the phosphorescence found in many ocean 
creatures. Others produce heat by releasing oxygen. 
The heat found in the center of hay that has been 
stacked while moist is created by them. They are, 
indeed, held responsible for many cases of spontaneous 
combustion. Still other bacteria produce brilliant 
coloring matter. 

Industries which are Based on the Tiny Plants 

Hundreds of industries employ bacteria in profitable 
ways. We have mentioned cheese- and butter-mak¬ 
ing, but tanning also requires their aid. The farmer’s 
silo would be useless without them. The preparation 
of tobacco, of indigo, of scores of commercial products, 
calls for their assistance. So if some evil members of 
the bacterial family create trouble and suffering by 
spreading disease, we must not forget that the others 
seem to be doing all in their power to make up for it. 

To describe bacteria, men had to invent a new unit of 
measurement, called the micron. This is one-thousandth of 
a millimeter in length, and it takes about 25,000 microns 
to make an inch. Most bacteria are about one micron wide 
and from one to seven microns long. This means that one 
thousand bacteria can lie side by side on the head of a pin. 

Bacteria are of many 
shapes, but they fall generally 
into one of three classes: 
bacilli or rod-shaped bacteria, 
cocci or round ones, and spir¬ 
illa or spiral and curled ones. 

Many bacteria are provided 
with cilia, or hairlike projec¬ 
tions, with which the speedi¬ 
est ones can travel about four 
inches in 15 minutes. They 
multiply very rapidly by split¬ 
ting in two. Under good 
conditions a bacillus will reach 
maturity and split into two 
bacilli in 30 minutes; each of 
these will at once proceed to 
repeat this performance, so that within 24 hours billions of 
bacilli are produced from the original parent. 

Some bacteria, instead of splitting into halves, change 
themselves into cells called “spores.” These may develop 
at once into the full-grown bacteria; or, if conditions of 
moisture and temperature are not favorable, they may lie 
in the spore state for days or even years before springing 
into active life. In this condition they are capable of 
resisting great extremes of heat and cold. In fact, even 
full-grown bacteria have been known to live comfortably 
in water heated to 160° F., while others have recovered 


after being frozen for days in liquid air, at a temperature 
of 418° below zero. Fortunately, few of the disease-pro¬ 
ducing bacteria are so robust and vigorous. The article on 
Antiseptics describes the means used for killing these germs. 

BADEN (ba'den), Germany. Just across the Rhine 
River from the French province of Alsace lies the 
republic of Baden, which was a grand duchy of the 
German Empire until 1918. It is the fourth in size 
of the German states, having an area of 5,800 square 
miles, a little less than that of Connecticut and Rhode 
Island combined. Its population of 2,000,000 slightly 
exceeds that of those two states. The greater part 
of its surface is mountainous, and about two-fifths is 
heavily wooded, falling within the region called the 
Black Forest (see Black Forest). 

The chief manufactures are toys, textiles, cigars, 
chemicals, machinery, pottery, and jewelry. Pforz¬ 
heim is especially famous for the latter. The most 
important agricultural products are wheat, oats, bar¬ 
ley, rye, potatoes, sugar beets, hops, and the grapes 
from which both red and white wine are made. 
Karlsruhe is the capital, and Heidelberg is the seat of 
the oldest university in Germany. Mannheim, the 
largest city, is the chief manufacturing center and has 
a large river traffic. The mineral springs of Baden- 
Baden make it a famous health and pleasure resort. 

In the Middle Ages, Baden was merely a group of feudal 
possessions, which continued to grow, little by little. The 
greatest additions were made during the Napoleonic era, 
when by fighting first on one side and then on the other 
the ruler won numerous concessions and was allowed to 
take the title Grand Duke. As a state of the German 
Empire, Baden had 14 members in the Reichstag or federal 
parliament, and three members in the Bundesrat or 
federal council. 

BADGER. In traveling over the sagebrush plains 
of eastern California, Utah, and Oregon, you will be 
sure to see many a badger burrow. But unless you 
are lucky you may never catch sight of the badger 
itself, for it is a timid 
animal and rarely comes 
out except at night. Even 
if you should surprise one 
away from its burrow, 
you might never notice 
it because of the extraord¬ 
inary broadness and 
flatness of its clumsy body. 
When alarmed il will often 
flatten against the ground 
“like a doormat or a 
turtle”; and the long silky 
gray hairs, parted along 
the spine, spread out in the grass on each side so 
that the animal might be mistaken for a clod of 
earth or a stone. 

But beware of the badger when it is cornered, for 
it will fight like “a stack of wildcats.” A single 
badger is often a match for several dogs, and hence 
the cruel sport of “ badger-baiting” was once common 
in England and the west of the United States. From 
this practice we get the word badgering , meaning 


BEWARE OF THIS FELLOW 1 



From this picture, showing Mr. Badger’s broad flat body, you can 
form some idea of how he looks when he plays “doormat,” and how 
hard it would be to find him in tall grass. 


contained in the Easy /Reference Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

303 







BADGER 


BAGDAD 




“persistent annoying.” The jaws are so hinged that 
dislocation is practically impossible, and hence they 
maintain their hold with great tenacity. 

Badgers are common in the nothern parts of Europe, 
Asia, and America. The head is pointed at the snout 
and the feet are armed with long claws used in digging 


and for defense. The thick fur is valuable, and the 
hairs are used in the manufacture of artists’ brushes. 

The American badger belongs to the West and 
shows a fondness for the open prairie, Wisconsin being 
known specifically as “the Badger State.” It is about 
two feet long and grayish in color with irregular black 
bands on the back; underneath the fur is whitish. 
The throat and sides of the face are white, with a 
white stripe running from the nose over the forehead, 
and in front of each eye is a black patch, a marking 
which gives the face a clownlike appearance. The 
legs and feet are black. With its strong claws the 
badger lays open the burrows of the prairie dogs, 
ground squirrels, gophers, field mice, etc., feeding upon 
these animals and on birds, frogs, small snakes, lizards, 
grasshoppers, and other insects. 

Badgers belong to the weasel family ( Mustelidae ), which 
also includes skunks, otters, minks, martens, and wol¬ 
verenes. Scientific name of American badger, Taxidea 
taxus; European badger, Meles taxus. 


THE BAGDAD OF THE ‘ARABIAN NIGHTS’ 


Bagdad', Mesopotamia. “The Glorious City” 
is the official designation on all Turkish docu¬ 
ments of this city on the Tigris River, about 
350 miles north of the head of the Persian Gulf. 
As one approaches Bagdad from the desert it 
appears truly beautiful. A mass of verdant palm 
trees rises out of the treeless plain, and glitter¬ 
ing above these are the wonderful gold domes of 
the mosque tombs. 

But this is a case where distance lends en¬ 
chantment; as one comes nearer the city, the 
glories vanish. The houses of the town are 
crude constructions of brick, mostly from ancient 
ruins, and of adobe. The streets are so narrow 
| at times that one beast of burden fills the entire 
space from wall to wall, and the Tigris River 
serves both as sewer and as the source of the 
water supply for the inhabitants. 

How many people live in Bagdad no 
one knows, and estimates vary from 70,000 
to 200,000. Of this population about one- 
fourth are Jews, descendants of those who 
were carried away into the Babylonian captivity 
■ \ by Nebuchadnezzar; one-tenth are Christians, 
and the rest are Mohammedans. 

Straddling the Tigris at the point where that 
river and the Euphrates most nearly approach, 
the city has long commanded a large part of 
the traffic between India, Persia, and Europe. 

The chief exports to Europe are wool, dates, 
wheat, horses, and oriental fabrics, while the 
imports are iron and copper, sugar and coffee. 
To control this trade, and to pave the way for 
political aggressions, Germany in 1902 obtained 
from the Turkish government the right to build 
a railway to Bagdad. She immediately began 
her famous Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, which was 
completed to a point about 400 miles north of 
Bagdad when the World War of 1914-18 broke 
out. With the occupation of Bagdad by the 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


304 


place 


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British on March 11,1917, the dream of German dom¬ 
ination of the East ended. With the British capture of 
the city also ended the Turkish dominion, under which 
the country had suffered for centuries, and under 
which the glories of Bagdad had largely departed. 

The city was built in 762 a.d. as the capital of the Moham¬ 
medan world. That was the time of its glory, for Bagdad 
with its population of 2,000,000 was then the largest city 
in the world. Under the rule of the Arabs it was preeminent 
in literature, in art, and in science. Those were the days 
of the ‘Arabian Nights’ and of the splendid court of Harun- 
al-Raschid, the calif who was contemporary with Charle¬ 
magne. The Paris and London of that day were but 
miserable villages compared with Bagdad, “the capital of 
the world, the center of luxury, the emporium of commerce, 
and the seat of learning.” The calif’s treasury was heaped 
with gold; the calif’s court was thronged with learned men, 
poets, jurists, grammarians, wits, scribes, and musicians; 
and among them all who so wise and pious as the great 
Harun himself, scholar and poet, who prostrated himself a 
hundred times daily and made the pilgrimage to Mecca 
many times? But ruder Asiatics envied the wealth of 
Bagdad, and in time the Turkish guards plundered it. Then 
it was sacked by the Mongols in 1258, and its glories departed. 
After being plundered and robbed again and again by 
Mongols and Tatars, it finally became a part of the Turkish 
Empire in 1638. 

BAGPIPE. In the highlands of Scotland, in Brit¬ 
tany, and in parts of Italy the bagpipe is the most 
popular of musical instruments. Once it was common 
in nearly all parts of Europe. As usually made it is 
a large leather bag, often covered with cloth, having 
a mouth-tube by which the player fills the bag with 
his breath. The tune is played on a pipe with finger- 
holes, and three other pipes called “drones” each con¬ 
tinuously sound a single note of the scale. Sometimes 
a bellows is used to blow up the bag. 

The bagpipe is a very ancient instrument. It is 
spoken of in the Old Testament, and was used by the 
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. It is the national 
instrument of the Scottish Highlanders, and pipers are 
attached to Highland regiments in the British army. 
BAHAMAS ( ba-ha'mas ). Columbus made this group 
oi islands in the West Indies famous, for Watling 
Island, the outermost of the Bahamas, called by him 
San Salvador, was probably the first land sighted in 
the New World. 

The Bahamas form a line 600 miles long from a 
point off the east coast of Florida to the island of 
Haiti. Through this barrier there are but three chan¬ 
nels for large vessels, for the islands are merely the 
exposed tips of a great submarine range composed of 
coral, shell deposits, and sand. In all the 20 inhabited 
islands there is only one running stream, which is 
found on Andros. Fresh water is supplied by wells 
dug in the soft rock. This rock formation grows hard 
on exposure to air and thus provides ideal building 
material. 

The Bahamas, populated chiefly by negroes, belong 
to Great Britain. The climate is agreeable and 
healthful, and Nassau, the capital, situated on New 
Providence Island, is a popular winter resort. Fruits 
and vegetables grow in profusion. The chief exports 
are sponges, sisal hemp, salt, tomatoes, and canned 


pineapples. The total area of the 3,077 islands and 
islets is about 4,400 square miles. Population, about 
60,000. 

Baikal ( lH'kal ), Lake. A large and very deep 
body of fresh water in southern Siberia, 386 mil es 
long and 20 to 50 miles wide. It is fed by numerous 
streams from the Baikal Mountains, a spur of the 
Altai Range, and the chief outlet is the Angara River, 
a confluent of the Yenisei. Trains of the Trans- 
Siberian Railroad were formerly ferried across Lake 
Baikal, but now pass around its southern end. The 
lake is crescent-shaped and is believed to be the 
deepest fresh-water lake in the world, having a 
maximum depth of more than 5,600 feet. It abounds 
in fish, including salmon, sturgeon, and fresh-water 
seals. Steamboats have begun to develop trade on 
the shores of the lake, which are rich in petroleum. 
For four or five months of the year its waters are 
frozen and trade is carried on over the ice. 
Baking powder. Similar to the action of yeast 
in making bread is that of certain chemically prepared 
substances called baking powders, in making biscuits, 
cake, and other quickly-made “breads.” Like yeast, 
they generate the gas carbon dioxide, which forms 
bubbles and thus “leavens” the dough or causes it to 
rise and become light and porous. Baking powders 
take less time to act than yeast, since they form car¬ 
bon dioxide by direct chemical action, while yeast 
forms it by fermentation. 

Baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) is the active 
agent in most baking powders; but they are usually 
classed as belonging to one or another of three groups 
according to various supplementary substances which 
they contain. Thus we have cream of tartar pow¬ 
ders, which contain potassium bitartrate; phosphate 
powders, in which a phosphate such as potassium 
orthophosphate is one of the ingredients; and alum 
powders, containing some form of alum. The possible 
harmfulness of alum baking powders is a disputed 
point (see Alum). A little starch is added to keep 
the other ingredients apart and prevent interaction 
before use. 

Much the same result is obtained by using baking 
soda with sour milk. Used alone, baking soda will 
give off carbon dioxide, but the sodium carbonate it 
leaves behind has a disagreeable taste and gives the 
food an unpleasant smell; the other constituents of 
baking powders are added to prevent this. 

Balboa, Yasco Nunez de (1475-1517). On Sept. 
25, 1513, the Spanish explorer Balboa beheld from 
the top of a mountain in Panama the gleaming waters 
of the western ocean— 

. . . . when with eagle eyes, 

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise— 

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 

He was the first European to look upon the waters of 
that mighty ocean, and to him also belongs the honor 
of being the first white man to cross the Isthmus of 
Panama. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

305 






|BALBOA 

Balboa was a Spanish adventurer who had unsuc¬ 
cessfully tried farming in San Domingo. When he 
left that settlement in 1510 to join an expedition to 
Darien, he had himself taken on board ship in a cask 
labeled “victuals for the voyage,” in order to avoid 
his creditors. When he gained control of the colony 
of Darien he started on his explorations in order to 
keep the favor of the Spanish king; and for him he 


BALDWIN 1 

claimed the “South Sea,” as he called the Pacific, and 
all lands washed by it. He was too late, however, 
with his peace offering, for when he returned to 
Darien he found that a new governor had been 
appointed in his place. Friction between the two 
developed immediately, and as the governor had the 
power in his hands, he threw Balboa into prison. 
Later he had him beheaded for stirring up a rebellion. 




STORY of BALDER, 

SON of ODIN 


B ALDER ( bal'der ). Among all the gods of Norse 
mythology there was none so beloved and beautiful 
as Balder, son of Odin. When he passed it was like 
the coming of sunshine, and every grief fled before 
the brightness of his presence. In all his life he had 
never known a moment of sadness, and the gods vied 
with one another in showering favors upon him. 

One night his sleep was haunted with dreams of 
dire disaster. When the gods learned of this, sorrow 
fell upon them. His mother Frigga heartbroken 
roamed the earth, supplicating all living things not 
to harm her son, and they willingly gave their promise. 
The gods thereupon rejoiced and happiness reigned 
in Asgard, their habitation. 

Thenceforth Balder led a charmed life, and on 
festival days the gods hurled missiles in play at the 
invulnerable hero, who smiled when darts and stones 
fell harmless at his feet. 

But among the gods was one selfish, jealous being 
named Loki, who wished to put an end to Balder’s 
reign of love. Disguising himself, he sought out 
Frigga and obtained from her the admission that 
there was one frail little plant, the mistletoe, whose 
promise of protection to Balder she had neglected 
to get. It was so insignificant and inaccessible in 
the oaks of the mountain-side that tired with her 
journey she had failed to visit it. 

On the strength of this information Loki made a 
spear shaft out of the oldest, toughest sprigs of 


mistletoe. Hoder, a blind god, loving Balder and 
wishing to honor him, consented to throw the shaft, 
not knowing that it alone of all things was harmful 
to the beautiful god. Pierced to the heart, Balder 
fell, and his spirit journeyed to the underworld. 
Sorrowing, the gods pleaded for the release of Balder. 
The ruler of the underworld consented, provided 
that every living thing should weep for his return. 
The whole grief-stricken world immediately began 
to weep, with the exception of the hateful Loki. 
Balder therefore was not released, and he has dwelt 
in the underworld from that day to this. 

A tiny, aster-like flower with pure white petals, which 
grows everywhere by the roadside, is called in his honor, 
“Balder’s brow.” In the Norseland when the dark long 
winter sets in the people say, “All nature sorrows for Balder.” 
And when the spring breaks forth with budding trees they 
cry, “The spirit of Balder again roams the earth.” 

Baldwin, Robert (1804-1858). That Canada is 
today a loyal and contented member of the British 
Empire is due in large measure to the far-seeing 
political wisdom of Robert Baldwin. During the 
early half of the 19th century, when Canada was in 
the grip of a Tory oligarchy that distributed offices 
and lands as it pleased and ruled without regard to 
the desires of the people, Baldwin came to the front 
as leader of the moderate wing of the group of states¬ 
men known as the Reformers. Their task was to lay 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

306 














(BALEARIC ISLES 


BALKAN PENINSULA 



the foundations for Canadian self-government, to 
reconcile democracy and empire, and thus save 
Canada from breaking the bond that joined it to the 
mother country. 

Elected to the legislature of Upper Canada in 1829, 
four years after he began the practice of law in the town 
of York (now Toronto), Baldwin at once became the 
champion of responsible government. He'held that 
the only cure for the manifold evils of the day was to 
establish the English system of cabinet and parli¬ 
amentary government, with a legislature elected en¬ 
tirely by popular vote. He so constantly advocated 
this reform that he came to be known as “the man 
with one idea.” But though he was indefatigable in 
his efforts to bring about responsible government, he 
had no sympathy with the extremists who, goaded by 
the stubborn opposition of the Canadian Tories and 
the British Colonial Office, launched the ill-fated 
rebellion of 1837-38. (See Mackenzie, William L.; 
Papineau, Louis J.) 

Twice Baldwin was called to the executive council, 
in 1836 and 1841, only to resign on questions involving 
the principle for which he was fighting. But at last, 
in 1842, after the union of Upper and Lower Canada, 
he won his first great triumph. With Louis Hippo- 
lyte LaFontaine, the Liberal leader of Lower Canada, 
he formed the first administration to accept respon¬ 
sible government. But a controversy with the 
governor-general soon led to his resignation. In 1848 
Baldwin and LaFontaine were again returned to 
power, and the principle for which they had fought 
so courageously was finally established. Although 
the Baldwin-LaFontaine ministry carried through an 
unprecedented number of important reforms, it was 
not radical enough for the extreme wing of the Liberal 
party, and Baldwin resigned in 1851. The remainder 
of his life was devoted to bringing about a better 
understanding between the English and French sec¬ 
tions of Canada. 

BALEARIC ( bal-e-ar'ic) ISLES. This group of islands 
lies off the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The five 
largest are Majorca (or Mallorca), Minorca, Iviza, 
Formentera, and Cabrera. They were an independ¬ 
ent kingdom in the 13th century, but now form a 
Spanish province. Vines, olives, and fruit trees are 
abundant. Port Mahon, in Minorca, is one of the 
finest harbors in Europe. 

The Phoenicians and Greeks visited the islands in early 
times. Later they were subject to Carthage, but were 
added to the Roman Empire in 123 b.c. The natives were 
famous slingers in the Carthaginian and Roman armies, 
and their name, Baleares, comes from the Greek word 
baXlein, meaning “to throw.” The area is 1,935 square 
miles; population, about 330,000. 

Balkan ( bal-kan’) peninsula. The “wild west” 
of North America, where once savage Indians ranged 
the plains and cowboys and bandits made life 
picturesque but uncertain, has vanished. But in 
southeastern Europe, in the region known as the 
Balkan Peninsula, there still persists an age-long wild¬ 



ness of land and costume, which makes it a land of 
romance and fascinating interest, at the same time 
that it is for statesmen the “firebrand of Europe.” 

The Balkan Peninsula is the easternmost of the three 
southern peninsulas of Europe. Its northern limit is 
fixed by the Danube and Save rivers and the Transyl¬ 
vanian Alps. On the east, at the Dardanelles and the 
Bosporus, it approaches so closely to Asia that it forms 
a bridge between the two continents. On the west it 
looks across the Adriatic to Italy, whose interests and 
ambitions now parallel, now oppose, those of the 
Balkan peoples. 

For the most part the country is a wild mountainous 
region, underlaid by rich mineral deposits which, 
owing to the backwardness of the country, are sun 
almost untouched. Running westward from the 
Black Sea are the lofty and rugged Balkan Moun¬ 
tains, from which the peninsula takes its name. 
These soon split up into other ranges, one of which— 
the Pindus Mountains—extends to the southernmost 
tip of Greece. The peaks range from 3,000 to 10,000 
feet in height. North of the Danube River lie the 
plains of Rumania, which geographically are an exten¬ 
sion of the plains of Russia rather than part of the 
Balkan Peninsula, but politically Rumania is grouped 
with its neighbor states to the south. In this plain 
large crops of wheat can be raised, but in the rest of 
the Balkans it is only a precarious existence which the 
inhabitants wrest from the soil by means of a prim¬ 
itive agriculture. 

A Medley of Races and Tongues 

A part of the unprogressiveness of the people of the 
Balkans is due to the mountainous character of the 
country itself, but more must be charged to its history. 
Although the peninsula, including Rumania, has an 
area of only about 200,000 square miles—little more 
than two-thirds the size of Texas—it contains more 
different peoples, with separate languages, customs, 
national aspirations, and religions, than any other 
equal area in the world. 

At the opening of the World War, in 1914, the 
Balkan Peninsula was divided among eight different 
countries—Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Bul¬ 
garia, Rumania, Turkey, and Austria, for the latter 
country held the westernmost districts called Bosnia, 
Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. The peoples were even 
more numerous than the countries. The Albanians 
are believed to be descended from the ancient Illyr¬ 
ians, who probably came into the peninsula about 
3,000 years before the birth of Christ. The-Greeks 
trace their history back to the days when Greece was 
the center of the world. The Rumanians recall in their 
name (from “Rome”) the days when their ancestors 
were sent out by the Roman emperor to guard the 
boundaries of his empire. The most numerous race 
are the Slavs, but there are several different branches 
of this stock—Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 
—and there is much admixture of other stocks, 
Turkish, Armenian, and the like. Around Constanti¬ 
nople the Turks predominate. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

307 






Mixtures that Make Trouble 


1 B A L K AN 


PENINSULA 



THE MOUNTAINS WHERE THE WAR CLOUDS GATHER 



f.zerncpwit/. ''sSvjTt* 


^°Tokay 


2 s rsrxg 


torus tal 


JCraiova 


Iona 


^S5ft>no;i 


^ ♦< rjfldi-ianopl 


‘SEA OF MAR MOR** 


lomKi 


IMBROS<ai ! 

(Qsf n»< e | 

J^ltemnos r s 


Gulf of 1 
Taranto 


TYRRHENIAN 


CORFU’ 


SKYRO's 4 '? 


CHIOS] 


cephalonla; 


- iHSiSL *v-f 

milosjW? .afk Vi. 

‘5. «* " \ ’ 


C. Mate 


RHODES £j0I/ 


l . — ^ i 

120 East Longitude 


Mountains which cut up a land into small sections cause the formation of “war clouds”—in the Balkans, at least—as naturally as mountain 
peaks gather clouds that bring the rains. The Balkan Peninsula has been the scene of constant wars ever since the days of the Greeks. 


If each of these peoples were settled in one 
definite area, the Balkan question might admit of 
solution, but practically every one of these groups is 
scattered over the greater part of the peninsula. 
Rumanians are found in Bulgaria, Greeks in Turkey, 
and Slavs everywhere. In addition to this intermixing 
of peoples there is an equally troublesome interming¬ 


ling of religions—Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, 
Armenian Catholic, Mohammedan, Jew, etc.—which 
still further complicates the “Eastern Question,” as the 
problem of the Balkans is usually called. 

At rare intervals the whole Balkan Peninsula has 
been united under one government. For example, it 
all formed part of the Roman Empire in the days of 


For any s u bjact 


not found in 


its alp habetical 


308 


place 


see information 





















Life in Field and Town 


BALKAN PENINSULA 



In the Villa; 
Set the V 


that 

•Id Afire 


A Hooded Woman of Mostar 


A Slovak 
T * Freight Car 


Hen’s Fashions 
in the Balkans.,; 

No one who tours the Balkan countries will fail to remember the market place in Serajevo (Bosnia), the town in which the Austrian crown 
prince was assassinated, thus bringing on the World War; nor the women reaping in the fields; nor the quaint costumes of the peasants 
in some districts. Where the Mohammedan faith prevails the women never appear in public without their long robes that shroud them 

from head to foot and with heavy veils over their faces. 


FAMILIAR SCENES IN THE BALKAN LANDS 


the supremacy of the City of the Seven Hills. But when 
the barbarian invasions began, in the 4th century, the 
Balkan Peninsula was the first part of the empire in¬ 
vaded. Successive waves of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and 
other peoples came into the country, but were pushed 
on farther west by the hordes of Slavs pressing upon 
them from the north. Then came the Turkish invasion. 
In 1453 Constantinople fell, and the Turkish power 
was soon established up to and beyond the Danube. 


In the 19th century came the gradual redemption 
from Turkish rule. In spite of frequent uprisings, 
it was not until 1830 that Greece managed, with the 
aid of the western European nations, to gain her 
independence. One by one the other Balkan nations 
freed themselves from Turkish oppression, until now 
Turkey holds in Europe only the city of Constantinople. 

A number of Balkan wars accompanied this break¬ 
up of the Turkish Empire. In 1828-29 Russia aided 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of thie work 

309 













BALKAN PENINSULA 


O ON 1 


BALL 


the Greeks to win their independence. Twenty-five 
years later the Russian demand for a protectorate 
over all Christians of Greek faith residing in Turkey 
precipitated the Crimean War (1854-56) in which 
Great Britain, France, and Piedmont came to the 
aid of Turkey and defeated Russia. The troops of 
the Czar intervened a third time, in 1877-78, to aid 
the revolting Serbians and Bulgarians against the 
Turkish policy of massacre; but the Peace of San 
Stefano, which Russia forced upon Turkey, was set 
aside by the other powers in the Congress of Berlin 
in favor of one much less favorable to the oppressed 
Christian peoples. 

Russia’s interest in the Balkans was traceable 
chiefly to her desire to obtain possession of Constan¬ 
tinople and other parts of the inheritance to be left 
by the “sick man of Europe,” as the Czar once called 
the decaying power of Turkey. For over a century 
the game of intrigue and war over the “New East” 
went on, the other powers of Europe interfering at 
times to aid the subject peoples in their revolts, and 
at times to block Russia’s plans. Then Austria began 
to dream ambitious dreams of eastward extension— 
the Drang nach Osten —and these gradually linked up 
with Germany’s far-reaching plan for a Berlin-to- 
Bagdad railway and a “ Middle-Europe” under Teu¬ 
tonic control, in which the Balkans should be their 
“corridor” into Asia. 

Many calculations were upset when, in 1908, the “Young 
Turks” seized the government of Turkey, and sought to 
restore the “sick man’s” waning vitality. Austria made 


haste to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina—two Turkish 
provinces which she had administered for some time—and 
Bulgaria declared her complete independence. 

The Young Turks proved themselves, if anything, more 
oppressive to the Christian populations than the old govern¬ 
ment had been. After a massacre of Christians in Mace¬ 
donia in 1912, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro 
formed the Balkan League against Turkey. When that 
country was weakened by war with Italy over Tripoli, they 
declared war on it in October 1912. By striking in different 
places at the same time they completely overwhelmed 
Turkey, which in six months’ time was forced to ask for 
peace. The Treaty of London, signed on May 30, 1913, 
limited her territories in Europe to a small strip about 
Constantinople. 

Because of the interference of other countries, however, 
the peace was short-lived. Austria and Italy had insisted 
on the creation of Albania as a separate principality in the 
western part of the Balkans. This upset an agreement 
which had been made by Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria for 
the division of the conquests from Turkey, and in June they 
commenced fighting among themselves. Rumania joined 
the other Balkan nations in opposing the claims of Bulgaria, 
and that country was defeated. By the Treaty of Bucharest 
(signed in August 1913), Serbia and Greece gained increased 
territory, but Adrianople was handed back to Turkey. 

These Balkan wars were the prelude to the World War 
of 1914-18. Germany and Austria had supported Turkey 
against the Balkan allies in 1912, and Bulgaria against the 
other allies in 1913. The double defeat was a serious blow 
to German and Austrian prestige, so both were glad, in 
July 1914, to seize upon the murder of the Austrian archduke 
at Serajevo as a pretext for crushing Serbia. This precipita¬ 
ted the greatest war the world has ever seen and one which 
incidentally had far-reaching effects on the peoples and states 
of the Balkan peninsula. Serbia, Rumania, and Greece were 
all enlarged, while Bulgaria was reduced in area. (See World 
War of 1914-18; also articles on the separate states.) 


FLYING GAS-BAGS from MONTGOLFIER to ZEPPELIN 

The Story of How Man Learned to Soar Higher than the Highest Mountains 
and Float at Will Through the Invisible Ocean of Air 


B ALLOON. On June 5, 1783, a large 
crowd was assembled in a field near 
Annonay, France, in the center of which 
stood a pile of straw and a mass of 
linen cloth supported on a frame. 

Presently fire was set to the straw and 
slowly the cloth swelled into the form of 
a huge bag, as the hot air and smoke 
ascended into it. When fully inflated 
it was let go. The bag rose rapidly to 
a great height, remained in the air ten 
minutes, and descended a mile and a half away. 
The credit for this first balloon ascent in history— 
though without a passenger—belongs to two brothers 
named Montgolfier, the sons of a wealthy paper 
manufacturer. 

For 4,000 years men had known how to weave cloth, 
and ever since fire was discovered they had known 
that smoke ascends. They had the materials for 
balloons; all they needed was the idea. Joseph Mont¬ 
golfier was the first man in history to conceive the 
idea of “harnessing smoke” by confining it in a bag. 


On Aug. 26 of the same year, J. A. 
C. Charles, a noted French scientist, 
sent up from Paris a bag of varnished 
silk, 13 feet in diameter, filled with 
hydrogen gas. It rose 3,000 feet and 
traveled 15 miles into the country. 
There the terrified peasants, believing 
it to be an evil spirit, fell upon it with 
pitchforks and tore it to pieces. This 
was the first gas balloon. 

The first living passengers in a bal¬ 
loon went up on Sept. 19, 1783, at Versailles, in a 
Montgolfier model. They rose to 1,500 feet and 
descended eight minutes later in a forest two miles 
away. The passengers were none the worse for the 
trip, except that one of them had kicked another 
severely. The cause of the quarrel was never ex¬ 
plained, for these first of all aeronauts were a sheep, 
a rooster and a duck! 

The first human being who tempted fate in the 
clouds was Jean Pilatre de Rozier, a native of Metz, 
Lorraine. He went up in a hot-air balloon on Oct. 



For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

310 










These six Frenchmen, the fathers of aviation, amazed the world between 1783 and 178S by demonstrating the possibilities of human flight. 
At the right are the brothers Montgolfier, who invented the hot air balloon (1783). Next come Professor Charles, who made the first hydrogen 
balloon the same year; Pilatre de Rozier, the first human being to ascend in a balloon (Oct. 15, 1783); Jean Pierre Blanchard, who crossed 
the Channel from Dover to Calais (Jan. 7, 1785); and, in the foreground, the Marquis d’Arlandes, who accompanied De Rozier in the first 

flight in a free balloon (Nov. 21, 1783). 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

311 






































Exploring the Upper Air | 


1 BALLOON 

15, 1783, near Paris. The balloon was “captive,” 
being fastened to the ground by a long cable. Five 
weeks later, on November 21, De Rozier and the 
Marquis d’Arlandes soared from the ground without 
a cable, the first men to navigate 
the air in freedom. They remained 
up 25 minutes, drifting about five 
miles with the wind. 

From that time on balloon 
ascents became increasingly com¬ 
mon. Inventors learned how to 
hang small furnaces below the 
mouths of fire balloons, so as to 
keep up the supply of hot air and 
make longer trips possible. But 
the greatest development came in 
the gas balloon, which soon re¬ 
placed entirely its elder brother. 

Long before any successful ex¬ 
periments were made with 
balloons, men had discussed the 
problem of flying. Some believed 
it possible to hold themselves up 
with wings like a bird (see Air¬ 
plane), but the majority of 
scientists thought the answer 
could only be found in “lighter- 
than-air” machines. The difficulty 
lay in finding a substance suitable 
for inflating balloons. The suc¬ 
cess of the Montgolfier experiment 
was really an accident, for the two brothers believed 
it was smoke that made their linen bag rise. It was 
not until later that hot air was recognized as the true 
source of their power. Air expands when heated, so 
that a cubic foot of hot air is lighter than a cubic 
foot of cold air. The difference in weight between 
the hot air inside the old fire balloon and the same 
amount of cold air was great enough to offset the 
weight of the balloon and passengers. The difficulty 
lay in keeping the air hot. When the fuel for the 
furnace was exhausted, there was nothing to do but 
come down. 

What was needed was a gas which should be lighter 
than air, no matter what its temperature. Hydrogen 
possesses this quality to the highest degree, being 14 
times lighter than air (see Hydrogen). Although 
some balloonists used the cheaper coal gas, it was 
not long before hydrogen became the standard. 

The fire balloon could be made to rise and fall by 
regulating the heat of the furnace. For the gas 
balloon, however, it was necessary to devise a valve 
which would release a part of the gas when the 
aeronauts wished to descend. To enable the balloon 
to rise to higher levels, bags of fine sand were carried 
as ballast and emptied over the sides as needed. 

Scientific Use of the Balloon 

As soon as the balloon was sufficiently improved, 
science seized upon it as a means of exploring the 
upper reaches of the atmosphere, to ascertain the 


variations of temperature and air pressure. It was 
in this manner than Prof. A. Berson and Dr. R. J. 
Suring, of Berlin, Germany, rose on June 30, 1901, to 
a height of 35,440 feet. At high levels balloonists 
find the atmosphere so rarefied 
that it is hard to breathe, while 
the corresponding decrease in air 
pressure causes dangerous de¬ 
rangements of blood circulation. 
Indeed, many sky-explorers have 
died in their balloons, and these 
two German balloonists, even 
though they were equipped with 
oxygen tanks for breathing, were 
unconscious during a part of 
their trip. 

To obtain scientific informa¬ 
tion without these great risks, 
investigators hit upon the scheme 
of sending up self-recording ap¬ 
paratus, such as thermometers, 
barometers, etc;, in small bal¬ 
loons which carried no passengers. 
One of these “sounding balloons” 
reached a height of 125,505 feet 
(23.38 miles), and brought back 
the information that at this tre¬ 
mendous height the temperature 
was 60 degrees below zero and 
the pressure only 1/250th of 
what it is at sea level. 

The difficulty in reaching these great altitudes is not 
so much due to the inability of the balloon to float in 
the highly rarefied atmosphere, as to the fact that 
when the exterior pressure is so much reduced the gas 
bag tends to expand and burst. This obstacle has 
been overcome by sending up sounding balloons of 
india-rubber with a parachute attached which will 
bring the instruments back to earth safely after the 
balloon itself has reached its maximum height and 
exploded. 

The round balloon, which is at the mercy of the 
wind the instant it leaves the ground, does not offer 
a satisfactory means of travel. Great distances, how¬ 
ever, have been covered in such balloons. One of the 
longest trips ever made was by E. Rumpelmayer 
(March 19 to 21, 1913), who sailed 1,492 miles from 
Paris to a point near Kharkof, Russia. Explorers of 
unknown lands expected much aid from balloons, but 
their hopes were dashed by the tragic fate of Salomon 
A. Andree, a Swedish scientist who set out July 11, 
1897, from Spitzbergen, hoping to reach the North 
Pole, 600 miles away. A carrier-pigeon set free by 
him returned three days later, and two floating buoys 
were found with messages of his progress; but nothing 
further was ever heard of him or of his two com¬ 
panions. 

During the Civil War in America captive balloons 
were used to some extent by the Union armies for 
observation, and during the siege of Paris, in the 


A BOAT TO SAIL THE SKIES 



. This is the idea of a lighter-than-air machine 
set forth by Francis Lana, a Jesuit, in 1670. 
His project was to get lifting-power by exhaust¬ 
ing the air from very thin copper globes. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

312 










The First Dirigibles 


Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, many messengers 
were sent out of the imprisoned city by balloons. The 
chief difficulty was the lack of means for controlling 
the direction of flight, and modern science set itself 
to the task of solving this problem. 

Balloons that Can Be Steered 

The first effort to propel and steer a balloon by 
artificial means seems laughable to us today. The 
balloonists took up huge oars of cloth-covered frame¬ 
work and tried to row the big gas bag as you would 
row a boat on a lake! In 1852, however, Henri Gif- 
fard installed a light steam engine in the car of a cigar¬ 
shaped balloon, and achieved near Paris the first 
feeble flight against the wind. But it was not until 
the beginning of the 20th century that any notable 
success was recorded in such attempts. 

On Oct. 19, 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont steered 
a cigar-shaped dirigible balloon, 108 feet long, 20 feet 
in diameter, and equipped with a propeller driven by 
a gasoline engine, around the Eiffel Tower in Paris, 
at the rate of 19 miles an hour. This feat proved to the 
world the future usefulness of the “airship.” Germany, 
which organized for war as did ho other country, 
at once saw the military possibilities of this inven¬ 
tion, and from this time forward the supremacy in air 
navigation passed from France to Germany, chiefly 


BALLOON( 

through the efforts of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. 

It is said that during the American Civil War, 
Count Zeppelin, then a young military attach^ to the 
German embassy in Washington, obtained the privi¬ 
lege of going up in one of the observation balloons 
behind the Union Lines. What he saw convinced 
him of the military value of balloons, and he returned 
to Germany to devote his life to this work. From 
1897 on, his long experience was brought to bear on 
building dirigibles, but of a different type from those 
used by Santos-Dumont. 

Count Zeppelin found that the long gas bag, which 
was necessary to give speed and steadiness, had a 
tendency to “buckle” in the middle when driven 
against the wind, so he constructed a rigid framework 
of aluminum, with compartments to hold many sep¬ 
arate drum-shaped gas bags, tapering in size toward 
each end. The whole structure was covered with 
varnished silk. The framework also enabled him to 
attach some of the propellers to the balloon itself, 
instead of to the car, as had been done by other 
inventors. It also made it possible to bring the cars 
closer under the balloon, all of which gave increased 
power and lessened the “drag” of the air. 

The first test of a “Zeppelin,” as these huge rigid 
airships came to be called, was made in June 1900, 


THE FIRST BALLOON ASCENSIONS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD 



These pictures, from old prints, illustrate two of the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers with their balloons. That on the left took place 
in the gardens of their father, a rich paper-maker in Annonay, near Lyons. The ascent on the right was made at Versailles in the presence 
of the king and queen and a large body of spectators. In a cage hung to the balloon were a sheep, a cock, and a duck. 

contained in the Eaty Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

313 












Over the Ocean by Balloon 


BALLOON 


and it attained for a short distance 
a speed of 18 miles an hour. In 
1906 another Zeppelin traveled 
around Lake Constance, in Switz¬ 
erland, turning curves and doing 
other “stunts” which proved the 
ease with which it could be steered. 
In 1908 another Zeppelin traveled 
250 miles in 11 hours, but was 
wrecked in a storm. By this time 
Count Zeppelin’s fortune was 
nearly exhausted, and the German 
government undertook to finance 
his projects. 

The Zeppelin in the World War 

When the World War of 1914- 
1918 broke out, Germany was 
equipped with a fleet of giant 
Zeppelins, which were intended to 
spread terror in France and Eng¬ 
land. Although these vessels 
carried out several destructive 
bombing raids over England, they 
did not prove to be effective war 
machines. Their great bulk made 
them easy targets if they flew low 
enough to drop their bombs ac¬ 
curately, and as scouting machines 
they were surpassed by the speedier 
and far less expensive airplanes. 
The latter, indeed, were their 
greatest foes, since they were able 
to fly around and above them and 
set them on fire with incendiary 
bullets. Although Count von Zep¬ 
pelin died on March 8, 1917, a 
disappointed old man, the princi¬ 
ples worked out in these great 
balloons are proving highly useful 
in the peaceful navigation of the 
air today. 

In the summer of 1919 a giant 
British dirigible, the R-34, built on 
the Zeppelin principle, made the 
first balloon crossing of the Atlantic 
Ocean. It sailed from a point near 
Edinburgh, Scotland, to Mineola, 
N. Y., in 108 hours, and three days 
later started back to England, 
making the return trip in 75 hours 
and 3 minutes. 

The largest Zeppelins reached the 
enormous length of 760 feet, with a 
diameter of 75 feet. For such an 
immense frame aluminum was too 
fragile, so an alloy called duralumin 
was used. This consisted of alum¬ 
inum with three 
per cent of 


A SOUNDING BALLOON 


30 miles 

;v 



15 miles 



11 miles 



5 miles 



V 


Sea Level 


ding 

beyond the reach of man-carrying gas bags. As the balloon rises, the pressure of the atmosphere 
i on the outside diminishes, allowing the gas inside to expand. The balloon keeps on swelling 

copper dim one until finally the rubber bursts and the parachute brings the instruments safely back to earth. 


per cent of nickel, and was five 
times as strong and very little 
heavier than aluminum. These 
great airships carried from six to 
eight 240-horse-power motors, dis¬ 
tributed through the forward, 
middle, and rear cars. The for¬ 
ward car, well up in the bow, 
contained, besides an engine room, 
the captain’s cabin and the pilot 
room, where all the intricate instru¬ 
ments for controlling the huge sky- 
dreadnought were situated. Two 
cars were slung to the middle sec¬ 
tion, each of which held one or 
two engines, to drive the flank 
propellers high up on each side of 
the monster. The rear car hung 
some distance forward of the great 
rudder and elevator planes; it con¬ 
tained three engines driving three 
propellers, two up on the sides and 
a third projecting aft along the 
center line. 

The “Cat-Walk” 

Running the entire length of the 
ship, up inside the framework, was 
a long passage called, because of its 
narrowness, the “cat-walk.” To 
make room for this passageway, 
each of the 16 gas bags in their var¬ 
ious compartments had a V-shaped 
notch underneath, like a narrow 
wedge cut out of a pie. The cat- 
walk not only enabled the 20 or 
more members of the crew to go 
from car to car, but it provided 
them with sleeping quarters. Here 
also were stored the big gasoline 
tanks which fed the engines, and 
reserve supplies of bombs, spare 
parts for the motors, provisions, 
etc. A system of ladders led from 
the cat-walk to the cars beneath, 
and near the center a perilous climb 
between two of the gas-bag sections 
led through a narrow manhole to 
the very ‘ ‘ roof’ ’ of the airship. The 
outer hull was then reinforced to 
form a long narrow path, leading to 
gun platforms near the bow and 
stern, where lookouts kept constant 
watch for hostile aircraft. 

The best speed of the war Zep¬ 
pelins was about 70 miles per hour. 
They had a lifting power of about 
30 tons, in addition to their own 
weight of about 
30 tons. Their 
highest cruising 


For any subject not found in its alp ha betical place see information 

314 










ANNONAY 

1783 


VERSAILLES 

1783 


LYONS 

1784 


ANNONAY 1783 


MARSEILLES 

1784 


SPAIN 

1784- 


ASCENT BY 
TESTU-6RISSY 
ON HORSEBACK. 

1798 


FLEURUS 

1794 


EDINBURGH 

1784 


PARIS 1863 


LONDON 

1847 


PARIS 

1883 


PARIS 

1852 


GERMANY 

igOO 


PARIS 

1901 


FRANCE 

1907 


BRITISH 

1907 


MODERN 

BALLOON 


OBSERVATION 

BALLOON 


MODERN DIRIGIBLE 


FROM THE MONTGOLFIER FIRE-BALLOON TO THE DIRIGIBLE 


Here is the family tree, so to speak, of the modem balloons, beginning with the picturesque devices of the Montgolfier brothers in 1783 
and 1784 and ending with the dirigibles and observation balloons used in the World War. Balloons used for scientific purposes have not 
changed much in shape, and it is interesting to note how the latest of the dirigibles resembles the aircraft produced in Spain in 1784 and 

the one in which Testu-Brissy made his daring ascent on horseback. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

315 




















BALLOON 


“Kite Balloons” in Warfare 



THE START OF A BALLOON RACE AT PARIS 



This shows one of the balloon races in Paris during the days of the greatest interest in this form of aircraft. One of the contestants, 
M. Foumoy, is just leaving the ground. This contest took place Sept. 11, 1912, and Foumoy covered 725 miles in 13 hours, 1 minute and 

12 seconds. 


altitude was between 12,000 and 16,000 feet. The 
estimated expense of building, equipping, and manning 
one of these larger Zeppelins was more than $1,000,000. 
Several of them were brought 
down by British and French 
gunfire during the war, while 
others were forced to land 
after maneuvers to escape had 
exhausted their gasoline supply. 

The experiments of the 
allied nations with dirigibles 
during the war were, on the 
whole, more successful than 
those of Germany, since they 
used such aircraft rather as 
defensive weapons. The Brit¬ 
ish and American “blimps” of 
a small non-rigid type, carrying 
a single car slung amidships, 
with an engine capable of 
driving the vessel at 35 miles 
an hour, are believed to have 
destroyed more German sub¬ 
marines than any other single 
agency. Such vessels of the 
Allies cruised constantly over the North Sea and the 
British Channel, watching for the stealthy “ U-boats,” 
hovering above those that they found, and dropping 


depth bombs upon them with considerable accuracy. 
Other coast patrol airships, built for the United 
States, Great Britain, and France, rendered great 
service in convoying transports 
and cargo ships through dan¬ 
ger zones. 

“Sausages” or “Kite 
Balloons” 

Of all the war balloons, the 
old “captive” form of balloon 
—now built of a “sausage” 
type—proved the most useful. 
Along every battle-line these 
“sausages” bobbed in the wind, 
while observers in the tiny 
baskets beneath telephoned to 
their artillery the information 
needed to guide the accuracy 
of the gunfire. They also 
reported the movements of 
enemy troops, and signalled 
messages to distant points 
when other means of communi¬ 
cation failed. 

These “sausages,” which 
are still part of all army equipment, are usually 
given the official title of “kite balloons.” Ordinary 
spherical balloons have a tendency to whirl around 


A BALLOONIST AND HIS SAND BAGS 



Balloonists carry bags of sand for ballast suspended 
from the outside of the car. As the bags of sand are 
emptied the craft rises, and pilots are thus able to 
check a too hasty descent. 


For any subject not found in its alp ha betical place eee information 

316 








OBSERVATION BALLOONS IN THE WORLD WAR 



Swung in their baskets from these queer “sausage” balloons, the observers noted movements of the enemy and other facts of military value. 
One of the two men made the observations and checked up what he saw with the map of the territory spread out before him and called 
out the information to his companion, who telephoned it down to another man on the ground below. The telephone operator had the receiver 
attached to his ear and the transmitter to his mouth, just as the telephone girls do in the exchange, thus leaving both hands free. The 
parachutes were for use in case a well-aimed shot from an enemy airplane perforated the gigantic “sausage.” 

contained in the E a » y Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hi $ work 

317 






























THE FIRST TRANSATLANTIC LINER OF THE AIR 





-77 i l ' j w VV^ wS 


Hammocks 


Aecesstubeto 
"PI a-l form 

Forward Cun i 

PI a-t f or -jf- ~ v ~ 


Ventila+imJ 
ShafT to° 
C orridor 


WoorinJ Rope Tub 

E m ere* ncy Water 
Ballast Discharge 


f L r,f ! rr ITTP-I l"*i, rn IT 


•mm 


/ 

. Walking Way 

in Corridor 


Lar< 
a Slo 


Petrol 

Tanks 


forward 

Power 

Car 


Control 


Cabin 


LENGTH- 643-5 FT. 

BEAM- . 79 FT. 

HEIGHT..9 1.0 FT. 


Drinkind 
Water 3 

Parachute 

Cone for . 
each man) 


Petrol 

Tanks 


One oFtwo 
wind Power 
Cars 

(Port, Car . 
not shown) 


Drinkifl 
W ater 


Aerial .for picking up 
/ Wireless Messages 


inside the Corridor showing the Walking Way anc 
some of the Hammocks Parachutes and 
Petrol Tanks 


Racks for 
metal Cup a 
Plates 


t 'i jn Di isSiiiS!fSsl) 

FlapTablos Crew Space 

( Food iocooked by Engine Exhaust in Engine Cars) 


Si 


n'e C |f 


Here we can get a good idea of one of those queer flying fish called 
dirigibles. This is the British dirigible R-34, which made the first 
balloon flight across the Atlantic, July 2 to 6, 1919, in 108 hours with 
a crew of 31. The return trip was made in 75 hours. The hull is of 
stream-line shape, built of duralumin girders, and in sections of varying 
size. All along inside the keel is a triangular space, down the center of 

For any subject not found in its 


which is a girder covered with ply wood about one foot wide which forms 
a “cat walk” or walking way. On each side of this is the fabric outer 
cover of the ship, which must not be trodden on. At intervals along 
each side of the gangway are fixed upright cylindrical tanks containing 
“petrol,” as gasoline is known in England, and other apparatus, includ¬ 
ing a water-tank, parachutes, and hammocks. At one point, near the 

alphabetical place see information 


318 




















































































































>ne 

as Bag 

howp 

ompiete 


Gas Bags in section 


site 1 


La 


/ 


Hammocks a 
Para chutes 


Lavatory 


Outer Cover 
Fabricbroken away 
to show Corri dor. 
Gas Bags, etc. 


walking Way 
in Corridor 


Aft Car Petrol 

with 2 Engines Tanks 


, ... Adjustable 

Access Hatch / Radiators 


Ventilator 

ng” Light 


Triplex 
. Class 


window 


Compressed Air 

Landing Bag 

Engine Exhaust 
Silencer 

Z>be flFt Car 

With two Engines coupled together 
In this Car there are Auxiliary Controls Tor 
use in case steering goec wrong Forward. 

I 

« 

forward car, is the crew space. Here the whole width of the keel is 
floored in. Below the keel, and accessible by ladders, are four cars 
or gondolas. The forward car contains the control department—the 
“bridge” of the ship and (behind it) the wireless cabin. Amidships 
are two “wing” cars slung opposite each other a little way up either 
side of the hull. The aft car, like the forward car, is immediately 


under the keel. The motive power consists of five 250-h.p. engines, 
one each in the forward and wing cars, and two in the aft car. At the 
after end of the hull are sets of planes, two for lateral and two for 
height control. A long tube running the entire height of the ship gives 
access to the forward gun platform. There are several bags of water 
for ballast to be let out in emergency so that the dirigible would rise. 


Tb*‘ 

Larder 


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BALLOON 


BALLOT 




A gigantic spider’s web? No, we are looking into the R-34 in process of construction. The framework has been completed and the outer 
covering is being put into position. During the World War, when most of the men were away fighting, the girders for the hull of these 
aircraft were assembled and riveted by girls with pneumatic hammers. 


rapidly and to “bob” and “buck” when they are 
restrained by a ground cable. To overcome this 
tendency the new gas bags are sausage-shaped, 
and rigged so that they rise in a slanting position. 
At the lower end is a separate compartment called 
a “ballonet,” with an opening into which the wind 
rushes, creating sufficient pressure on the gas bag 
itself to keep it always fully distended and so prevent 
it from buckling. Wings, which are sometimes mere 
flaps of cloth, and sometimes are inflated extensions 
of the ballonet itself, project on each side. Below the 
ballonet is another air-catching bag, shaped like the 
curved end of a sausage. This is called the “steering 
bag” and serves to keep the under side of the whole 
balloon facing the direction from which the wind is 
blowing. Even with these strange-looking devices, 
only persons not subject to sea-sickness are able to 
withstand the vessel’s heaving and tossing. The 
“sausages” can ascend to 1,500 feet on calm days, but 
their limit is very much lower in stiff winds. 

Fire, the Dread of the Balloonist 
Fire has always been the greatest dread of balloon¬ 
ists. The flimsy bag above them filled with hydrogen 
or coal gas is ready to burst into flame at the slightest 
spark. Hundreds of lives have been sacrificed in this 
way; so scientists sought ceaselessly for a non-inflam¬ 
mable gas which was lighter than air and could be 


produced in sufficient quantities. The gas helium was 
known to be non-inflammable and much lighter than 
air, but it was not until the World War was nearly 
over that American scientists discovered how to pro¬ 
duce it cheaply enough and in sufficient quantities for 
use in balloons (see Helium). 

But though helium came too late to be of use in 
the war, it has revolutionized ballooning for subse¬ 
quent ages. Inflated with helium, the great airships 
of the future will sail among the clouds more safely 
than the ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. Lightning 
storms will have lost their terrors for the balloonist. 
The motors, which in the past had to be placed as far 
away from the gas bags as possible, may now be 
drawn up inside the bag, if necessary, thus gaining 
greater speed through less resistance. 

Airplanes will probably always outnumber balloons 
on the highways of the sky, and they will be found 
cheaper and more useful for rapid transportation. 
But the great dirigibles which can lift many tons and 
float more calmly, giving passengers all the con¬ 
veniences of steamer travel, will always have an 
important place in commerce and travel. 

Ballot. The word “ballot” means “little ball,” 
and our use of the term comes from the early practice 
of voting by colored balls. A white ball meant a 
favorable vote, and a black ball an adverse vote; from 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


320 


place 


see information 









BALTIC SEA 


) The Australian Ballot 


this comes the expression “to blackball” a person, 
meaning to vote against admitting him to a club or 
similar organization. 

Some form of balloting has been in use for centuries, 
but the use of “voting papers,” or the ballot as we 
know it today, is of recent origin. As early as 1634 
the freemen of Massachusetts Bay Colony demanded 
the written ballot instead of the usual “raising of the 
hands” in choosing a governor, in order that they 
might drop the aristocratic and unpopular Governor 
Winthrop from office. This was only an isolated case, 
however, and although a few states adopted the ballot 
system of voting in their new constitutions after 
1776, viva voce voting (by “living voice”) remained 
the general method in use- According to this the 
voter came to the polling place and announced pub¬ 
licly the names of the candidates for whom he voted, 
as was the custom of Great Britain until the adoption 
of the ballot there in 1871. This method encouraged 
vote-buying and intimidation; for when a vote was 
bought “the goods were delivered” in the buyer’s 
presence; a voter was often influenced to vote against 
his better judgment because of fear of the ill-will of 
his landlord or employer if he voted against the 
latter’s candidate. 

The states of the American Union gradually aban¬ 
doned viva voce voting, although it continued in some 
of the Southern states until after the Civil War. 
Unofficial written ballots were at first substituted for 
the viva voce method, each voter preparing his own 
ballot. Then the candidates began to print their own 
ballots; and later the political party had its ballots 
printed, each party using ballots of a different color. 
But still the ballot was not really secret, and corrup¬ 
tion continued. 

The next change came in 1888 when the states 
began to adopt the secret official ballot known as the 
“Australian ballot,” because it was first used in 
Australia. There are two forms of this ballot, and 
one or the other is now used in every public election 
in the country. They are the “party column” and 
the “office column” ballots. On the first, the names 
of all the candidates of each party for various offices 
are arranged in a vertical column under the party’s 
name; usually there is a circle at the top, and the 
voter can vote “a straight ticket” by placing a cross 
mark in it. In the other form of the ballot, which is 
the one used in Australia, the names of the candidates 
of all parties for a given office are placed in alpha¬ 
betical order, giving each candidate’s party connection 
after his name. 

The second type requires more intelligent voting, 
but it is impractical in elections where the number of 
candidates is very large. As the number of elective 
offices has increased, the ballot has grown to unmanage¬ 
able size, sometimes containing more than 400 names. 
These “blanket ballots” have become so complicated 
that it is difficult to vote intelligently, and for this 
reason an agitation has been started for a “short 
ballot” reform. This movement advocates the reduc¬ 


tion of the number of elective offices by making minor 
offices appointive. In this way the size of the ballot 
may be reduced and simplified, and the voter can 
choose more intelligently. At the same time he may 
keep control by the use of the recall. (See Initiative, 
Referendum and Recall.) 

Since about 1892 various types of machines have been 
in use for casting and counting votes. These voting 
machines are operated on the same principle as calculating 
and tabulating machines. (See Calulating Machine.) 

BALTIC SEA. The great arm of the North Sea 
which lies between Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Fin¬ 
land, and the former Baltic provinces of Russia, is the 
Mediterranean of northern Europe, and has for cen¬ 
turies been the chief highway by which the trade of 
that region has been carried on. It is chiefly by way 
of the Baltic that Russia has its outlet to the Atlantic. 
Russia’s “window to the west” was obtained by Peter 
the Great, who early in the 18th century built his new 
capital, St. Petersburg—now called Petrograd—on the 
Gulf of Finland. 

The “window” is closed three or four months of the 
year by ice. This is due not only to the fact that the 
Baltic region has a cold winter, but also to the fact 
that its waters contain only about a quarter as much 
salt as the ocean, and so freeze more readily. A fifth 
of the surface of Europe drains into it, through more 
than 250 rivers, among them the mighty Oder, Vistula, 
Neva, and Niemen. This enormous flow of river 
water, added to the fact that there is little chance for 
the water from the ocean to enter the Baltic through 
the narrow passages connecting it with the North Sea, 
explains why the waters of the Baltic are almost fresh. 
The narrow straits of the Sound, Great Belt, 
and Little Belt, and the Cattegat and Skagerrack 
furnished the only outlet to the Baltic until 1895, 
when the German government completed the Kiel 
Canal across the base of the Danish Peninsula. 

Even when the Baltic is open to navigation, it is 
dangerous to seamen because of its extreme shallow¬ 
ness on the German coast, the ruggedness of the 
Swedish coast, and the frequent violent storms accom¬ 
panied by sudden changes of wind. The greatest width 
is about 400 miles and the length is 960 miles. As in 
other inland seas, the tides are scarcely perceptible. 
The broken coast line—about 5,000 miles in length— 
furnishes some good harbors, the most important 
being Riga, Copenhagen, Kiel, Danzig, and Stock¬ 
holm. The north part of the Baltic is called the Gulf of 
Bothnia; on the east are the gulfs of Riga and Finland. 

The Baltic was the scene of a naval battle between the 
Danish and English fleets on April 2, 1801, known as the 
Battle of the Baltic, or the Battle of Copenhagen, in which 
the British seized or destroyed the Danish fleet to prevent 
its falling into the hands of Napoleon. At the beginning 
of the World War of 1914-18 there was some fighting 
between the Russian and German navies in the Baltic, but 
during the greater part of the war the German warships 
lay there useless. Although they had an outlet through 
the Kiel Canal, they seldom ventured forth, for England’s 
fleet commanded the North Sea. The former Baltic prov¬ 
inces of Russia proclaimed their independence in the course 
of that conflict. (See Esthonia; Latvia; Lithuania.) 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


321 


a t 


the end of t his 


work 













BALTIMORE 


Historic Events in Baltimore 


Bal'TIMORE, Md. Baltimore is the principal city 
of Maryland, the eighth in population in the United 
States, and the largest city of the Atlantic seaboard 
south of Philadelphia. It is situated in the north 
central part of the state, on the Patapsco River, 14 
miles from Chesapeake Bay and about 200 miles from 
the sea. The river is really an arm of the Chesapeake 
Bay, and it has been widened and improved to form a 
land-locked harbor, 12 miles long and 3 miles wide, 
capable of accommodating the largest steamships. 
Forts McHenry, Armistead, and Howard stand be¬ 
tween Baltimore and the sea. 

Days of the Baltimore Clippers 

Baltimore has been an important seaport since the 
early days of its history, when its fame was carried 
far and wide by the world-renowned “Baltimore clip¬ 
pers,” picturesque sailing vessels no longer in general 
use. Today, the boats of more than 50 steamship 
companies, mostly transatlantic services, regularly 
visit the city, making it the center of a great export 
and import trade, ranking third among American 
ports. Baltimore is the largest corn-exporting port 
in the United States, and it also exports large quanti¬ 
ties of wheat and other grains, flour, cotton, tobacco, 
copper, and coal. Articles of import include wood 
pulp, bananas, pineapples, sugar, and general mer¬ 
chandise. 

The city has forged ahead rapidly as a manufactur¬ 
ing center since the beginning of the 20th century. 
Its largest single product is men’s clothing; the pro¬ 
duction of tin, copper, and sheet iron ranks second. 
In addition Baltimore manufactures fertilizers, straw 
goods, and three-fourths of the sail duck made in the 
United States. Recently Baltimore has become one 
of the most important shipbuilding centers in the 
country. There are also large slaughtering and meat¬ 
packing plants, oyster fisheries, and fruit-canning 
establishments. One of the largest copper-refining 
plants in America is located here, and the Bethlehem 
steel works at Sparrows Point has a daily capacity of 
2,000 tons. 

Baltimore has many beautiful parks, with a com¬ 
bined area of nearly 1,400 acres, widely scattered over 
the city. Druid Hill Park, the largest, contains a 
statue of Christopher Columbus erected in 1792. In 
Westminster Cemetery, one of the oldest and smallest 
cemeteries in the city, is the grave of Edgar Allen Poe. 
The Washington monument and the Battle monu¬ 
ment, erected shortly after the War of 1812, gave 
Baltimore the name “The Monumental City.” The 
Washington monument, a noble shaft of marble 164 
feet high, surmounted by a heroic statue of Washington, 
was the first memorial erected in honor of Washington. 

One of the most notable of the many beautiful 
public buildings is the courthouse, built of white 
marble, containing mural decorations by the noted 
artists Blashfield and Turner. The city is the see of 
a Protestant Episcopal bishop and of a Roman 
Catholic cardinal (Cardinal Gibbons), whose diocese 
is the first in the United States. 


Many schools and colleges are located here. The 
Johns Hopkins University, one of the world’s great 
educational institutions, was established in 1876. 
Connected with it is the Johns Hopkins Hospital, one 
of the best equipped hospitals in the world. The 
Baltimore College of Dental Surgery is the oldest of 
its kind in the United States, and Goucher College is 
one of the oldest of women’s colleges. The Peabody 
Institute contains a famous historical library. 

Youngest of the Great Atlantic Cities 

Baltimore is the youngest of the great American 
cities on the Atlantic coast. It was founded in 1729 
for the purpose of establishing a port near the head 
of Chesapeake Bay. Originally it consisted of 60 
acres, and was named in honor of George and Cecil 
Calvert, Lords Baltimore, who founded the colony of 
Maryland a hundred years before. In 1745 it consoli¬ 
dated with a little town, settled in 1732, directly across 
Falls River. Baltimore was included in Baltimore 
County at first, and became the county seat in 1767. 
Later, however, the city and county were divorced, 
and Baltimore today has an independent government 
from the county. 

During the Revolutionary War, Baltimore housed 
for a while the Continental Congress, after that body 
was forced to retire from Philadelphia. In 1789 it 
became a port of entry, and in 1796 was incorporated 
as a city. In the War of 1812 the city was unsuccess¬ 
fully attacked by the British. It was the sight 
(Sept. 14, 1814) of the American flag flying over Fort 
McHenry after a night of British bombardment that 
inspired Francis Scott Key, who had been detained 
by the British during the battle, to write the national 
anthem “ The Star Spangled Banner.” The first blood 
shed in the Civil War was in Baltimore, April 19,1861, 
when a mob sought to prevent the passage through 
the city of the 6th Massachusetts and the 7th Penn¬ 
sylvania regiments, then on their way to Washington 
in response to Lincoln’s call for volunteers. 

First City Lighted by Gas 

Baltimore was the first city lighted by gas; the first 
steam passenger train in America ran from Baltimore 
to Ellicott City; the first steamship to cross the 
Atlantic sailed from Baltimore; the first electric tele¬ 
graph line was strung from Washington to Baltimore; 
and the first submarine to cross the Atlantic Ocean, 
the German U-boat Deutschland, docked at Baltimore. 
In Baltimore also were built the first linotype machine, 
the first iron steam vessel, and the first armor plate. 

The entire business section of Baltimore was 
destroyed by fire, Feb. 7 and 8, 1904. The property 
loss was great, amounting to more than 170,000,000. 
Later, however, the fire came to be regarded as a 
blessing, as the burned section rose from the ashes in 
new buildings of the most modern type. Extensive 
improvements were made on the waterfront, which 
included an elaborate system of concrete piers; the 
old narrow streets were widened, and an extensive 
sewer system was built. Population, about 735,000. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

322 






Balzac (i bal-zdc '), Honore de (1799-1850). This 
great French novelist was a heavy, bulky, dreamy 
man, who seemed to radiate strength and to turn off 
novel after novel, most of them masterpieces, with one 

shake of his mas¬ 
sive inspired head. 
There have been 
other novelists 
who threw a 
stronger beam of 
light on certain 
corners of life, but 
few who so widely 
and brilliantly il¬ 
luminated the 
whole of it. Bal¬ 
zac was the first 
French writer who 
sought to place 
on his pages our 
life entire—its good, bad, and mediocre points; 
its weak, strong, happy, sad, struggling, noble, 
and base sides—in one Welter together. His stories 
are as lifelike as though someone had pointed a motion 
picture camera at the scenes and people he writes of; 
only Balzac did more. The lens of his genius and his 
great understanding soul could look deeper than the 
surface of a picture. It could see through into the 
minds and hearts of people, and show how one event 
dragged another with it, and how one man’s life was 
fatally linked with another. The motion picture shows 
us a street full of people mysteriously rushing about. 
Balzac can show us where they are going, what will 
happen because they go there, and what they are 
thinking about while they go that makes their eyes 
so bright or their lips so pale. He shows them as a 
part of the entire great world, not as little desperate 
interesting fragments. That is why he is said to have 
“a sense of the whole,” and why his books are so 
clear, even in their wide detail. His famous series of 
novels called ‘The Human Comedy’ was intended to 
be a complete picture of modern life. 

But when we learn that he wrote 85 of these wonder¬ 
ful lavish novels in 20 years, we inquire what was the 
hidden dynamo which drove this indolent, sentimental 
heavy man to such a flood of energy, when he really 
liked to live easily, collect fine old furniture, keep a 
good cook, and chat with a few old friends. Let us 
examine his history to find out. 

He was born at Tours, educated there and at Paris, 
where he was an insatiable reader rather than a brilliant 
student. He studied law, failed in its practice, and 
until 1829 wrote worthless “pot-boilers” for the money 
they brought. Then his ‘Chouans’ was published, 
and his real work began. In 1834 he met the lovely 
Countess Hanska, a Polish beauty whom he worshiped 
at a distance and through a long correspondence, 
until at last they were married in 1848. But their 
great difference in social position and wealth forced 
him to compel the favors of fortune. He wrote like 


a slave, whipped his nerves with black coffee, stuck 
hours at his desk, engaged in wild financial specula¬ 
tions, to grow rich and marry his countess. He was 
always, like Sir Walter Scott, fighting against debt. 
When his fame was so brilliant that he was the social 
equal of the countess, and when his finances permitted, 
he attained his dream of marriage with her—only to 
die two years later, wrecked by his frenzy of work in 
the years before. 

Balzac’s chief works are: ‘Les Chouans’ (1829); ‘La Peau 
de chagrin’ (The Wild Ass’ Skin), 1829;‘Le Cure de Tours’ 
(1832); ‘Eugenie Grandet’ (1833); ‘Le Lis dans la vail6e’ 
(The Lily of the Valley), 1835; ‘Le Pere Goriot’ (Old Goriot), 
1835; ‘Cesar Birotteau’ (1837); ‘Ursule Mirouet’ (1841); 
‘La Maison Nucingen’ (The House of Nucingen), 1846; ‘Le 
Cousin Pons’ (Cousin Pons), 1846; ‘La Cousine Bette’ 
(Cousin Betty), 1847. 

Bamboo. The colossal treelike grass called bam¬ 
boo has been well styled “one of the most wonderful 
and most beautiful productions of the tropics, and one 
of Nature’s most valuable gifts to man.” It is a gift, 
too, with which Nature has been most generous, for 
more than 200 species of it are found in Asia, South 
America, and Africa. A single root may grow as 
many as a hundred polished jointed stems rising 30, 
50, or even 120 feet in the air. There are no limbs 


A NEW ROADWAY EVERY MONTH 



Bamboo grows so fast that, if the roadways are not constantly kept 
open, like this one in East Africa, they become overgrown in 30 days. 


except at the very top. Some species are three feet 
around. The rate of growth is often very rapid, in 
some cases as much as a foot a day. 

The uses of the bamboo are innumerable. Every¬ 
thing from a house to a pen-point is made of it. The 
young tender shoots are cooked for food as we use 



HONORE DE BALZAC 
Giant of French Novelists 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


323 













BANANA 


1 B A M B O O 

asparagus, and they form part of the familiar Chinese 
dish called “chop suey.” They are also pickled in 
vinegar and candied with sugar. The seed of those 
species whose fruit is a grain, like barley and rye, is 
also eaten, and the Chinese have a proverb that the 
bamboo seed is more plentiful when the rice crop fails. 
Some species have a fruit, not unlike an apple, that 
is baked and used as food. 

But it is the hollow tubelike stem of the plant which 
is most useful. It is used for the posts of houses. 
Split into strips it forms the planks for floors, roofs, 
and sides. Besides the familiar fishing-rod, it is also 
used for water-pipes, bridges, and cables, and the 
joints of the large stems are even used for pails and for 
cooking utensils. Strips are woven into mats, chairs, 
beds, cradles, cages, porch curtains, and other articles of 
furniture. Chopsticks, hairpins, phonograph needles, 
and the ribs of fans are made of bamboo, and from the 
interior portions, beaten into a pulp, is made a fine 
variety of paper. The outer skin of some species is so 
hard that native knives and swords have been made 
from it, with a sharp and durable cutting edge. 

Some species of bamboo are cultivated in green¬ 
houses and gardens in Europe and America for their 
ornamental value. 

Banana. The story of the banana industry is one 
of the wonderful romances of this modern age. Not 
very long ago this fruit was a luxury in temperate 
regions and a little-known luxury at that. The tall 
broad-leaved plant was cultivated by white settlers 
and natives in tropical lands only for their own use. 
The first bananas brought into the United States 
came about the middle of the 19th century, and for 
several years they were merely expensive novelties at 
some of the southern and eastern seaports. 

The Romance of the Banana 

Then Captain Baker, the owner of a Cape Cod 
schooner, getting ready to return home from a trip to 
Jamaica, looked around for a cargo. Because other 
freight was lacking he purchased a few bunches of 
green bananas. He made a quick voyage and docked in 
Boston with the bananas ripened and in fine condition. 
Hunting up his friend Andrew W. Preston, he said: 

“Preston, I’ve got some fine tropical fruit for you.” 

“What kind of fruit?” 

“Bananas.” 

“ Bananas! I can’t sell bananas. By the time they 
get here they’re so decayed they’re ready to throw 
away.” 

“Is that so? Look at this,” and he pulled out of 
his pocket a fine golden-yellow specimen very much 
like the fruit we are so fond of today. 

The fruit dealer took the whole lot. He realized 
the great commercial possibilities of the fruit if it 
could be transported without spoiling; and investiga¬ 
ting the possibilities, he laid the foundation for the 
great banana industry. Later he became the presi¬ 
dent of the United Fruit Company, which imports 
more than half the bananas brought into the United 
States today, and which has done more than any other 


organization to bring the banana within the reach of 
every consumer. 

But the task was by no means a small one, for the 
obstacles with which he had to contend were as dis¬ 
couraging and varied as the tangled forests and 
swamps of the tropics could make them. Transpor¬ 
tation of the fruit was only a small part of the prob¬ 
lem, for banana plantations themselves had first to 
be started. Contrary to common belief, most vari¬ 
eties of the wild banana do not bear edible fruit, but 
only a long pod filled with large seeds surrounded by 
very little pulp. 

Forests had to be cleared and swamps drained; 
railroads had to be built, bridges thrown across 
mighty streams, safe harbors made, and a fleet of 
specially constructed ships provided so that the fruit 
could be speedily transported. Today millions of 
acres of land are under cultivation, and bananas are 
raised on most of the islands of the West Indies and 
along all the Gulf and Caribbean coasts from Vera 
Cruz to the mouth of the Amazon. Central America 
is the greatest banana-producing area in the world. 
Cities with good schools and hospitals have been 
built where only a few years ago were disease-breeding 
jungles. Not only do the natives of these countries 
grow bananas in large quantities, but many per¬ 
sons from the United States and Canada have settled 
there and started plantations. The banana is also 
an important crop in the Canary Islands, throughout 
the Pacific islands, some parts of Africa, the Malay 
region, and the East Indies. 

Why Bananas are Picked Green 

Bananas are seldom allowed to ripen on the trees. 
The tree-ripened fruit matures so quickly that the 
skin breaks, and ants, bees, and other insects feed 
upon the pulp, spoiling it. So the bananas we buy in 
the store taste about the same as they do in the 
tropics, because they are cut green in either case. 

There are, however, many delicate varieties that 
cannot be exported because of their tender skin. 
Among these is the little straw-colored “lady finger” 
banana of the Canary Islands, which when fully 
developed is only three or four inches long, and has a 
melting pulp and exquisite flavor. The Mensaria 
Rumph, the “best of all bananas” of the Malay 
Archipelago, has a soft pulp scented as if with rose 
water. Other specially prized varieties are the 
Lacatan, a very sweet greenish-yellow banana of the 
Philippines, and the Champa of India, which rivals 
the pear in lusciousness. 

There are nearly 70 known species of banana. 
Some of these, known as plantains (Musa paradisiaca), 
are “cooking bananas” and are almost never eaten raw. 
The fruit of one kind of plantain grows to an enor¬ 
mous size, sometimes two feet in length and as thick 
as a man’s arm. Plantains constitute one of the 
chief foods of the natives in the tropics, taking the 
place of our bread and potatoes, but they are seldom 
exported as they are not in demand where potatoes 
are available. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

324 






’ 


| Ever Taste Banana “Figs”? 




FROM PLANTATION TO STEAMER 


In this banana grove in Costa 
Rica bunches of the green fruit 
are piled on the platform ready 
to be hauled over the narrow- 
gauge railroad to the point of 
shipment. Notice the height 
of the banana plants compared 
with the men on horseback. 

Banana “figs” are sold 
in large quantities in 
tropical countries as 
sweetmeats. They are 
ripe bananas which have 
been preserved by sprinkling 
with sugar and drying in the sun. 

Banana flour, prepared by drying unripe 
bananas and grinding, is largely used in 
the tropics. The flower clusters of some 
species of the banana plant are considered 
a delicacy in India. They are generally 
cooked in curries. 

But That Isn’t All the Banana Does 

With all these food uses you would think 
that the banana plant had done enough 
for man. Its broad leaves, however, are 
often torn into strips and woven into mats 
and coarse cloth; and the fiber which they 
contain is in common use by the natives 
for cordage and to some extent for paper. 

Indeed, one of the most important fiber 
plants that we have, from which comes the 
manila fiber used so largely for twines, 
ropes, and wrapping papers, is a close 
cousin to the plants which produce these 
tropical fruits, its scientific name being 
Musa textilis. 

A banana plantation is a magnificent sight, often 
extending over thousands of acres. The treelike 
plants grow to a height of from 10 to 40 feet, and the 
great drooping leaves, 6 to 10 feet long and 1 to 2 
feet wide, meet in arches that shut out the light of the 
sun. The plants grow from rootstocks and are usu¬ 
ally propagated by shoots of the parent stem. They 

contained in the Eaey Reference 


are planted in rows, very much like rows of 
corn, although they are set much farther 
apart to make room for the spreading leaves. 
The true stem is underground, but there 
is a stalk often a foot or more in diameter 
at the base, made up of the sheathing 
bases of the leaves, which protects the 
flowering stem as it pushes its way 
upward. Soon a long “bud” appears, made 
up of tightly overlapping purple scales, 
each of which protects a cluster of true 
flowers. The lower clusters wither and 
only the upper ones are fertilized and 
produce fruit. The bananas grow around 
the stem in ridges called “hands,” the 
standard sized bunch being nine hands to 
a stem, and 10 to 15 “fingers” to a hand. 
When the bananas are small they point out¬ 
ward but as they grow larger they 
upward and in toward the 
stem, and so grow with the 
ends turned up. The 
bunches we see hang¬ 
ing in our stores are 
thus upside down. 

These two humble 
servants of the public 
keep going back and 
forth all day long on 
the narrow tracks 
hauling the fruit to the 
docks. 


Here the bananas are being put into the hold of the vessel. The two men standing 
near the hatchway are holding up a particularly fine bunch for you to look at. 

The banana plant grows and produces fruit in from 
12 to 18 months. Each plant produces but a single 
bunch of bananas and after the harvest is cut down; 
but new shoots soon spring from the old root stock. 
“Big Mike” and the Rest of Them 
The green bunches, packed with banana leaves, are 
taken quickly to a seaport, loaded by automatic con- 

Fact-1 ndex at the end of thit Work 











veyors into ships, kept cold by fans and refrigerating 
plants, and at the end of the voyage discharged into 
freight cars by canvas belts with pockets. 

Most of the bananas sold in the United States belong to 
the species known as “Gros Michel,” which roughly trans¬ 
lated means "Big Mike” (Musa sapientum ); it is the large 
smooth yellow product of Jamaica and Central America. 
The Canary Island banana (Musa cavendishii), better 
known as the dwarf Chinese banana, is quite extensively 
raised in some sections of Central and South America, where 
other types cannot be raised because of a soil disease to 
which the Chinese banana is immune. It is smaller than 
Gros Michel but finer in flavor. The red Jamaica banana 
or barapoa is grown in various parts of the world, including 
the American tropics, and while it is popular with the public 
it is difficult to ship because the individual bananas do not 
cling closely to the stem. 

BANGKOK', Siam. Until recent times Bangkok, 
the capital of Siam, was the Venice of Asia. Not 
only was its commerce carried by water, but a large 
proportion of its people lived in houseboats on the 
river Menam. Now, however, the city has been 
modernized. Wide thoroughfares, carried across the 
canals by bridges, are lined with brick buildings, 
lighted by electric lamps, and traversed by electric 
street-cars. The new city surrounded by high walls 
has been laid out around the royal palace and its 
parks, which form the center of local interest. The 
modern aspect of this new section contrasts strangely 
with the numerous Buddhist temples, whose gilded 
spires and decorated roofs of carved teak-wood are 
found in all directions. 

Lying only 20 miles from the mouth of the Menam, 
Bangkok is the center of the foreign trade of Siam. 
The chief exports are rice and teak, and its imports 
are cotton and silk goods, foodstuffs, machinery, and 
oil. Most of its trade is in the hands of Chinese and 
European merchants. Population, about 540,000, of 
which 200,000 are Chinese. 

BANJO. The negro of the South made the banjo 
famous, for this most commonplace of musical in¬ 
struments in his hands will crash out the liveliest of 
tunes, or sob like a human heart. The negro poet, 
Paul Dunbar, sings its praise: 

. . . I jes’ lets down 

A banjo string or two 

Into the deepest of my heart, » 

An’ draws up chunes for you. 

Slowly dey comes swingin’ up, 

Aquiv’rin’ through an’ through, 

Till wid a rush of tinglin’ notes 
Dey reaches lights—an’ you! 

The banjo has a round tambourine-like body formed 
of parchment stretched over a frame, and a long neck. 
The catgut strings, usually five in number, are plucked 
or struck with the fingers of the right hand while the 
fingers of the left hand lengthen or shorten them by 
pressure against the fretted neck. The negroes are 
believed to have brought this instrument with them 
from Africa. 

BANKRUPTCY. In the days of the later Middle 
Ages', when the Italian cities were the money markets 
of the world, it was the custom to break the bench 
of any money-lender or banker whose debts became 


greater than the amount of his property. As his 
bench was his place of business, the breaking of it 
forced him to discontinue his former pursuit, and also 
implied disgrace. From the words describing this 
custom ( banco, meaning “bank,” and ruptus meaning 
“break”) has come our modern word “bankrupt”; 
and from the custom itself comes the practice of all 
modern nations of forcing a man who cannot pay his 
debts—that is, who is a bankrupt—to discontinue his 
business. This is done by means of bankruptcy laws. 

When the fathers of the United States drew up the 
Constitution, they put in it the provision that “ Cong¬ 
ress shall have the power to establish uniform laws on 
the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United 
States.” At first this power was seldom exercised, for 
most business was local in character and the regula¬ 
tion of it could readily be left to the individual states. 
In 1800, 1841, and 1867 federal bankruptcy laws were 
passed, but each was of an emergency character and 
remained in operation only a few months or years. 
When business operations began to expand, and a 
man’s creditors would often live in a dozen different 
states, it was necessary for Congress to provide a 
permanent federal law on this subject, and in 1898 
the present bankruptcy law was passed. 

According to this law there is voluntary and in¬ 
voluntary bankruptcy. Any debtor may become a 
voluntary bankrupt by filing a petition with the 
judge of the United States District Court, setting forth 
the fact that he is unable to pay his debts and that 
he is willing to surrender all of his property to his 
creditors. Any person or corporation (except la¬ 
borers, farmers, and national banks) who owes $1000, 
or more, may be declared an involuntary bankrupt by 
the district court, if he in any way attempts to cheat 
his creditors, or if he admits in writing his inability 
to pay his debts. In this case the creditors must file 
the petition. 

After a petition has been filed, either the judge of 
the court or a referee in bankruptcy to whom the 
judge may refer the case appoints a day on which 
the creditors may present their claims. If it is de¬ 
cided that the debts of the man are, as is claimed, 
greater than his property, he is declared bankrupt, 
and his property is handed over to a trustee. The 
trustee sells the property and divides the proceeds 
among the creditors in proportion to their claims. 
As soon as the settlement is finished, the debtor is 
discharged from bankruptcy and the remainder of his 
debts is canceled. 

In this way both creditor and debtor are protected. 
The debtor cannot continue contracting debts and so 
lessen the amount which each of his creditors will re¬ 
ceive; each creditor, also, is assured of receiving his 
fair share of the bankrupt’s property. On the other 
hand, after the bankrupt is discharged from bank¬ 
ruptcy he is able to start business anew, without the 
burden of the old debts which he could never hope to 
pay. It is more profitable for the creditor than the 
old method of imprisoning the debtor for debt; and 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

326 






Cruel Debt Laws of Old 


BANKS AND BANKING 


it is also more just to the honest debtor, for in this 
day of complicated business enterprises, a man often 
may become a bankrupt through no fault of his own. 

The chief difficulty arises from dishonest debtors who 
conceal their property and seek to free themselves 
from their debts by fraudulent bankruptcy proceed¬ 
ings. This, of 

HOW BANKS PAY DEBTS WITHOUT MONEY 

jw w ^ssfimraiii 


course, is contrary 
to the law. The 
early law of Rome 
gave a man’s cred¬ 
itors, if he could 
not or would not 
pay his debts, the 
savage remedy of 
dividing his body 
among them, or 
selling him and his family into 
slavery. 

Banks and banking. In 
every town of the country, no 
matter how small, there is usually 
at least one building with the 
word “bank” painted on its win¬ 
dows in large gold letters. . T his 
is the financial center of the whole 
community, and upon it business 
success depends. 

Many people consider a bank 
as a place merely for the safe- 


-PEOPLES BANK- 
Smiths Account 
$ TOO 

minus 100 to Brown 


600 

plus 100 from Gray 
$700 


The Peoples Bank 
owes the Conti¬ 
nental Bank 

$100 for Smith 

¥ 


interest, usually two or three per cent a year. The 
bank often invests its savings deposits in bonds which 
pay five or six per cent, and the difference represents 
the profits of the bank. 

If a person wishes to feel free to draw out his 
money at any time, he places it “on deposit” instead of 

putting it in the 
savings account. 
When one makes 
such a deposit, 
the bank enters 
it in a “ledger 
account” bearing 
the name of the 
depositor. Sup¬ 
pose you have 
deposited $500 in 


CONTINENTAL BANK - 
Browns Account Grays Account 

$600_I $800 

$1400 

plus 200fromGray.minus200toBrown 

$ 800_ 1 4 600 

$1400 


The Continental 
Bank owes the 
Peoples Bank 
$100 for Gray 


¥ 


$100 — $100 
- CLEARING HOUSE 
In the Clearing House it is 
Found that each bank owes 
the other $100, therefore 
no money changes hands 


This diagram shows you how the clearing house 
makes it possible for debts between banks to 
be paid without the use of money. Each 
bank, you see, offsets its debts with its claims. 


keeping of money which they do not need imme¬ 
diately. This function alone is of immense value 
to society, but a bank does much more. It is a 
lender as well as a borrower of money. From it, for 
example, a farmer may obtain money in October with 
which to buy a carload of cattle; he fattens these 
cattle during the winter and in the spring sells them 
at a profit which more than pays the interest charge 
on his loan. Or it may be that the bank advances 
money to enable the farmer to buy land, taking a 
mortgage as security. From the bank, too, the mer¬ 
chant and the manufacturer may borrow the money 
which at times they need to buy goods or raw mate¬ 
rials, or otherwise tide them over until they can realize 
on their merchandise or manufactures. The funds 
which are lent by the bank come in part from its 
capital and in part from the surplus money deposited 
with it either as a “savings account” or “on checking 
deposit.” 

A savings account may be started either at the 
savings department of an ordinary commercial bank 
or in a special bank which receives nothing but 
accounts of this kind. The money so deposited is 
supposed to be left in the bank for a long time, and 
most banks reserve the right to require a notice of 
from 30 to 60 days for the withdrawal of savings de¬ 
posits. In most cases, however, a savings bank will 
pay the money whenever the “pass book” showing 
the amount deposited and withdrawn is presented. 
In return for the use of this money the bank pays 


cash with your bank; your account 
will show that $500 is credited 
to you. The next day you buy 
a horse for $200 from a man 
named Smith. You give him an 
order or “check” ordering the 
bank to pay him $200 of your 
money. The check gives Smith 
authority to demand the $200 in 
gold, silver, or paper money; but 
instead of taking the cash, he may 
order the bank to keep it for him. 
The bank accomplishes this with¬ 
out handling any money. It merely subtracts. $200 
from your account and adds that amount to Smith’s. 
Such transactions as this, when no money changes 
hands, are said to be carried on by “credit,” and it 
is in this way that nearly 90 per cent of the busi¬ 
ness of our country is transacted. 

How Debts are Paid without Money 
Suppose, however, that Smith wished to have 
another bank keep his money instead of the one in 
which you keep your funds. He takes your order to 
his bank, and by “indorsing” it, or writing his name 
across the back of it, he gives his bank the right to 
demand $200 in money from your bank, so the $200 
is placed to his credit by his bank. During the course 
of the day many such orders on other banks come in 
to any large city bank. After banking hours these 
orders are collected and taken to the “clearing house,” 
a place where representatives from all the banks of 
the city meet. Here they balance their accounts. 
For instance, Smith’s bank may have $400 in orders 
on your bank, while yours has $500 on his. The 
account is settled by his bank giving yours a certifi¬ 
cate or check for $100. 

But Smith’s bank may be located in a small town 
and not a member of the clearing house in your city. 
In that case it sends the check to a bank in the city 
called its “correspondent,” and this institution takes 
your check to the clearing house and credits the $200 
in its books to Smith’s bank. For its services in 
collecting the city bank may charge a small fee or 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

327 




































BANKS AND BANKING 


Three Kinds of Banks 



“exchange.” The Federal Reserve Act, passed in 
1913, created a national system of clearing similar to 
that in use for districts, under which money can be 
readily and cheaply collected from any place in the 
country. Even if the men who are transacting busi¬ 
ness live in different countries, the banks are able, 
through the great banking institutions, to balance 
their credits so that usually it is necessary to ship 
but little gold across the ocean. 

Why Banks Can Loan Other People’s Money 

From long experience in handling money, banks 
have learned that when funds are placed in their 
hands, in at least three cases out of four, the orders 
or checks which are drawn against these deposits are 
not cashed—that is, taken in currency—but are 
merely redeposited. A study of loans has taught 
bankers that if a reserve in cash of one-quarter of 
the amount of loans is kept on hand, they can meet 
all demands. A bank therefore which has $400,000 
in deposits can safely lend $300,000 in short-time 
loans, if it keeps the other $100,000 in cash on hand. 
The bank makes a good part of its profits from the 
interest it receives from the money so lent. 

When a bank lends money it must take two pre¬ 
cautions: (1) It must make its loans for a short 
time only—usually 30, 60, or 90 days—so as to pro¬ 
tect the bank against a sudden increase in the de¬ 
mand for money; (2) it must be reasonably sure that 
its loans will be repaid. To satisfy itself on the latter 
point, banks investigate the character of the bor¬ 
rower and of his business. They ask of people who 
know him such questions as the following: What is 
his record for honest dealing? What are his church 
affiliations? Does he gamble or drink? What are 
his political ambitions? What is his style of living; 
his wife’s social ambitions? Does he spend more than 
his income, spend all of it, or does he manage to save 
some? Does he possess commonsense and shrewd¬ 
ness? What success has he attained in his present 
line of business; in other lines? What is the amount 
of capital invested in his business and what propor¬ 
tion does he own? What is the condition of his 
business? How much insurance does he carry? 

Why Good Business Men are Often in Debt 

Because practically every business man needs at 
some time or other to borrow money, it, is well to be 
able to show a good record in all of these lines. For 
this reason a bank account is a good business proposi¬ 
tion as well as an investment for the future. If a 
man’s previous record is good the bank will usually be 
willing to lend merely on his promise to repay, that 
is, his “promissory note,” although it may also want 
to be secured by the deposit of “collateral,” usually 
stocks or bonds which may be sold if the note is not 
paid. Usually the bank does not actually hand over 
the cash, but credits the amount of the loan to his 
account, so that he can write checks on it. This is 
called “lending the bank’s credit.” 

In the United States there are three classes of banks. 
A national bank is an institution which secures its 


charter, or right to carry on business, from the 
national government. Its business is regulated by 
national laws and its books are examined by officers 
of the federal government. The bank is not, how¬ 
ever, run by the government, and if it should fail, 
its debts are not paid by the government. State 
banks secure their charters from the states in which 
they are located, and conduct their business in accord¬ 
ance with the state laws. In many states there is no 
law to prevent anyone from displaying a sign “bank” 
and taking all the deposits he can get. The safety of 
such a private bank depends entirely upon the honesty 
and business ability of the men at its head. It may 
be as good as any national bank in the country, as is 
the J. Pierpont Morgan institution in New York City. 
But since there are usually no restrictions on the way 
the business shall be conducted, there is an unlimited 
field for fraud and dishonesty. 

Some of the private banks are known as “trust 
companies.” These started as organizations which 
“hold in trust” the property of deceased persons for 
the benefit of their heirs, and do business of a similar 
nature. But many trust companies have now devel¬ 
oped a general banking business also. 

Since 1913 the national banks are even more care¬ 
fully regulated, under what is called the Federal Re¬ 
serve Act. All national banks must be, and all other 
banks may be, members of the federal reserve system. 
By this law the United States is divided into 12 fed¬ 
eral reserve districts, and there is one federal reserve 
bank located in the federal reserve city of each dis¬ 
trict (see Federal Reserve Bank). 

Banks that Issue Money 

Practically all state and national banks are banks of 
issue—that is, they have the right to issue banknotes. 
These notes are a form of our paper money (see 
Money). They are promises of the bank which 
issues them to pay “lawful money” of the amount 
specified to the bearer on demand. After President 
Jackson destroyed the Bank of the United States in 
1833, there were frequently as many as 800 or 900 
different kinds of state or private banknotes in cir¬ 
culation, and as the banks could issue notes as they 
pleased, many of these notes were worth little or 
nothing. But after Congress established the system 
of national banks in the days of our Civil War, it 
taxed the notes of other institutions so heavily that 
this practically stopped the issuance of any but na¬ 
tional banknotes. The national banks were required 
to deposit with the government, bonds of the United 
States as security for the banknotes which they issued. 
Now practically all the banknotes issued are those of 
the federal reserve banks, and as their notes are taxed 
they are not apt to issue more of them than the busi¬ 
ness of the country makes profitable. 

The Federal Reserve Banks and the Farmer 

The federal reserve banks have helped the manu¬ 
facturer and merchant so much that in 1916 Congress 
passed the Federal Land Bank Act to aid the farmers. 
These land banks give the farmer the opportunity 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place tee information 

328 







[banyan tree" 


to borrow money on easy terms on his most available 
commodity—his land. The regulation of the system 
is practically the same as that of the federal reserve 
banks. (See Farm Loan Board.) 

The history of banking goes back to the money¬ 
changers of the medieval Italian cities who conducted 
their transactions from a 
bench on the street; and 
from the Italian word banco, 
referring to this bench, 
comes our modern term 
“bank.” From these mon¬ 
ey-changers in Italy devel¬ 
oped the first commercial 
bank, the Banco di Rialto 
of Venice, established in 
1587. England, France, 

Germany, Sweden, and 
most other states of Europe 
now have great state banks 
which act as agents of the 
government in its financial 
affairs. Since 1910 the fed¬ 
eral government has main¬ 
tained the Postal Savings 
Bank as a safe place of 
deposit for money, paying 
two per cent interest on de¬ 
posits. In North Dakota, 
under the leadership of 
the Nonpartisan League, a state bank called the 
Bank of North Dakota has been established to 
receive public moneys on deposit and lend them to 
farmers and merchants at reasonable rates of interest. 
Ban yan TREE. This remarkable tree of India 
and tropical Africa sends down from its branches 
great numbers of shoots which take root and become 
new trunks, so that a single tree may spread over a 
very large area. A specimen in the Calcutta botani¬ 
cal garden, about 100 years old, has a main trunk 13 
feet in diameter, 230 trunks as large as oak trees, and 
over 3,000 smaller ones. It is said that once upon a 
time 7,000 people stood beneath this natural temple. 
The banyan often grows to a height of over 70 feet, 
and lives through many ages, though its original 
trunk may decay leaving the younger ones to support 
the tree. It has large heartshaped leaves and incon¬ 
spicuous blossoms followed by cherry-like scarlet fruit 
which furnishes food for the birds and monkeys that 
live among its branches. 

Among the Hindus the banyan is held sacred, and 
its bark is considered to be a great tonic. The wood 
is light, porous, and of no value. Scientific name, 
Ficus bengalensis. 

BARBADOS ( bar-ba'dos ). Although the self-govern¬ 
ing British island colony of Barbados, the easternmost 
of the West Indies, is no larger than an average 
United States county, its nearly 200,000 inhabitants 
make it one of the most densely populated regions in 
the world. Its palm-shaded roads are lined almost 


BARCELONA f 


continuously with pink-tinted cottages or huts with 
roofs of ragged thatch. Many of the negro men 
emigrate because of the pressure of population, and 
so three-fifths of the inhabitants are females, who are 
to be seen everywhere skilfully carrying on their 
heads the goods they have for sale. 


A TREE WITH THOUSANDS OF TRUNKS 


Mere truly, in this banyan forest, is a case where “you can hardly see the wood on account of the trees. 
One tree has so many trunks that the parent is almost lost in its own wilderness. 

Negroes outnumber the whites about thirteen to 
one, but Barbados has solved the race problem, and 
there is no color line except that the races do not mix 
socially. Negroes have equal rights in the schools, 
in the churches, and in politics, and hold many im¬ 
portant posts. Civility and good humor seem to be 
universal, and law and order always prevail. 

England obtained the island by settlement about 
1625. The colony is administered by a governor, an 
executive council, and a legislative council, all ap¬ 
pointed by the British government, and a house of 
assembly elected by the people. The capital is 
Bridgetown. 

Coral reefs fringe the coasts of Barbados. The 
surface, broken by a few forests and streams, is ele¬ 
vated in the interior, where Mt. Hillaby rises to 1,104 
feet. Most of the island (area, 166 square miles) is 
under cultivation, chiefly for sugar cane, but also for 
cotton, coffee, and tobacco. It enjoys a healthful 
climate, which is especially beneficial for those with 
lung diseases. George Washington’s only journey 
abroad was to take his sick brother there in 1751. 
Hurricanes sometimes take a fearful toll of lives and 
property. Barbados (the Spanish word for “bearded”) 
probably takes its name from the bearded fig tree 
which grows there. 

Barcelo na, Spain. As you wander through the 
streets of Barcelona—the largest city, the chief manu¬ 
facturing center, and the second seaport in Spain— 
you find yourself in a cosmopolitan city of the modern 















BARCELONA 


BARLEY 



world. Picturesque remains of its ancient splendor 
are still to be seen in the “old town” with its narrow 
streets, medieval churches, and flat-roofed brick 
dwellings; but for the most part Barcelona is so dif¬ 
ferent from the quaint old cities characteristic of 
Spain that it seems a city apart, given over to 
business. 

Built on the sloping edge of a small plain, between 
the rivers Besos on the north and Llobr6gat on the 
south, Barcelona lies along the Mediterranean in 
the shape of a half moon. The “new town” to the 
north, built on a regular plan, has wide streets, hand¬ 
some modern houses of hewn stone, and gardens of 
almost tropical luxuriance. The main thoroughfare 
of the “old town” is the Rambla, which has a fine 
promenade, with plane-trees planted down the center, 
and on either side the principal hotels and the¬ 
aters of the city. On an oval hill at the highest 
point of the Rambla stands a famous 13th century 
cathedral, one of the finest examples of Spanish 
Gothic architecture. 

Since early in the Christian era Barcelona has been 
one of the most important Mediterranean ports. 
Chief of its extensive industries are the spinning and 
weaving of cotton, silk, and woolen goods. The 
World War of 1914-18 gave great impetus to the 
city’s manufactures, for many articles needed in 
commercial production, which had previously been 
imported, began to be manufactured there. Many 
new textile companies and tanneries sprang up, but 
the greatest growth was in the output of chemical 
products—dyes, soaps, fetilizers, drugs, etc.—formerly 
imported from Germany. The chief imports of the 
city are raw cotton, hemp, coal, grain, and foodstuffs. 
Fruits, wines, olive oil, textiles, leather goods, ma¬ 
chinery, furniture, etc., are among its exports. 

Barcelona is said to have been founded by the 
Carthaginian, Hamilcar Barca, in the 3d century 
b.c.; it thus acquired its ancient name Barcino. It 
became a colony under the Romans, and in the 
second century a.d. was the leading market on the 
western Mediterranean, rivaling Marseilles. It re¬ 
tained its importance under the Goths and the Moors, 
and in 801 came, with the rest of Catalonia, under 
Frankish rule. From the 9th to the 12th century 
its counts ruled it as independent sovereigns. It 
reached the zenith of its fame in the 12th century, 
when its merchant ships vied with those of Genoa and 
Venice, trading as far west as the North Sea and the 
Baltic, and as far east as Alexandria. But in the 
early 16th century much of its importance was trans¬ 
ferred to ports of western Spain, because of the trade 
that sprang up with America. In the 17th, 18th, 
and 19th centuries it came several times under French 
rule. 

As a result of its large industrial population, the 
city has long been noted for the frequency and vio¬ 
lence of its labor disputes, and has been considered a 
hot-bed of anarchism and other radical propaganda. 
Population, about 622,000. 


BARK. Why do we wear clothes, and why do birds 
wear feathers and fishes scales? For much the same 
reason that a tree is clothed in bark, only bark is for 
protection rather than for warmth. 

Each species of trees wears a characteristic outside 
garment so that if we were wise enough we should 
know the name of the tree by a glance at its bark. 

Between the inner bark and the body of the tree is 
a wonder-working layer of vital cells called the 
“cambium” that acts like a fairy godmother to the 
trees. The cambium builds cells on the inside that 
form the year’s ring of new wood on the trunk and 
branches; and on the outside it builds layers of cells 
which make the bark. At first these bark cells are 
soft and full of living material; but later they col¬ 
lapse, and the busy cambium builds another and 
another layer of cells inside them, thus pushing them 
out until they become dry, hard, and inelastic. Since 
the cambium is always building layers on the trunk 
of the tree to make it larger around, the pressure of 
this growth causes the bark to split into ridges, scales, 
or strips, since it is too dry to stretch. The bark 
protects the tree in many ways, especially from the 
attacks of fungi, and it should never be bruised or 
hacked off, thus leaving the wood exposed. 

The bark of many kinds of trees is of great commercial 
importance, that of oak and hemlock being used for tanning 
leather. Very important medicines and dyestuffs are made 
from bark. Quinine, for example, is made from the bark 
of the cinchona tree, and cascara, which is widely used as a 
laxative, comes from the bark of the California buckthorn. 
Stick cinnamon is the rolled inner bark of a small East 
Indian tree, used as a spice, and cork is the rough outer 
bark of a species of oak. Almost every boy has learned how to 
remove the bark on willow twigs by pounding, to make a 
whistle. The Indians made strong light canoes of the bark of 
certain birches, and from the pliable fibers of certain other 
barks savage tribes make rude cloths for rugs and clothing. 

Barley. The most ancient food of mankind, ac¬ 
cording to the historian Pliny, was barley, our fourth 
most important grain. Barley has been found in the 
excavated lake-dwellings of Switzerland belonging to 
the Stone Age. Chinese sacred books claim that it 
was known in China 20 centuries before the birth of 
Christ, and the ancient Hebrews used the grain while 
they were in Egypt, for it is referred to in Exodus. 

In appearance barley is not unlike wheat, but it 
will grow in climates too cold for the latter grain. 
It is cultivated from the arctic region of Alaska to 
tropical India, and it grows wild in western Asia. As 
it takes a shorter time for barley to ripen than for 
wheat, it is usually sown in the spring after the wheat, 
and is harvested before the wheat is ripe. It needs 
a light well-drained soil, and as the roots are short the 
ground does not require deep plowing. 

There are three well-known kinds of barley: the 
two-rowed, the four-rowed, and the six-rowed. The 
difference is in the number of rows of grain in the head 
and in the long beards or spikelets on each head. In 
the two-rowed variety only two rows of the spikes 
produce grains. In the four-rowed variety, four rows 
of the spikes are fertile; and in the six-rowed, each 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

330 


place 


see information 







In this picture A and B are six-rowed varieties. A is a commonly 
grown form in which the two outer rows dovetail together so that 
they look like a single row. Figure B represents the true six-row, 
or club, barley. Two-rowed varieties are shown at C and D. C 
has the “awns,” or beard removed. D is a slender variety with 
“awns” still attached. 

northern latitudes, to which it is better adapted than 
the others, as it is extremely hardy. 

Barley is not used as a food so much as are other 
grains, for it has little gluten in it. Still, thousands 
of peasants in Europe eat the black barley bread. 
The round grains, called pearl barley, and the patent 
barley flour are used for thickening soups, for making 
gruel for invalids, and for modifying cow’s milk for 
babies. The chief use of barley, however, is in the prep¬ 
aration of malt for beer and malted foods (see Malt). 

Scientific name of two-rowed barley, Hordeum sativum 
distichum; of four-rowed, Hordeum sativum vulgare; of six- 
rowed, Hordeum sativum hexastichum. 

BARNACLE. Individually barnacles are helpless 
little animals, not much bigger than your thumb; but 
collectively they can materially lessen the speed of a 
huge ocean liner. 

The common ship barnacle starts out in life inde¬ 
pendent, active, and able to swim about alone. But 


This group of barnacles was found attached to a cork floating in 
the currents of the sea. You can see how a coating like this ali 
over a ship’s bottom would be such a drag that the ship would 
have to go into dry-dock to have the little pests scraped off. 

ward path as soon as they attach themselves to some 
object. They develop a hard shell and lose their 
power of motion, except in the six pairs of feathery 
feet which project from the shell and wave food into 
their mouths. At the base of the barnacle’s shell is 
a cement gland which provides the powerful “stick¬ 
ing” qualities needed by the creature. 

Scientific name of ship barnacle, Leyas anatifera; acorn- 
shell barnacle, Balanus tintinnabulum. 


soon it gets tired and fastens upon any support it can 
hud- a rock, or a floating log, or a wooden pile under 
a pier. There it develops a limelike shell with a 
movable lid. It likes ship bottoms best of all, how¬ 
ever, because they provide it with excitement. Thus 
barnacles gather beneath the water line of vessels in 
such immense numbers that they produce a tremen¬ 
dous “drag” which slows down the craft. Ships have 
to be lifted out of the water from time to time to have 
their bottoms scraped free of these salt-water pests. 

Another kind of barnacle, sometimes called the 
“acorn-shell,” prefers to live on rocks. These may 
be found in large numbers at low tide, withdrawn into 
their small houses, waiting for the return of the water 
which brings them their dinner. 

It was believed at one time that barnacles were 
mollusks, like clams or oysters, but it turned out that 
they are crustaceans—degenerate relatives of the lob¬ 
ster and the crab. Born free, they start on the down¬ 


spikelet produces a grain of barley. The two-rowed 
type is most common in Europe, while in this country 
the six-rowed kind predominates. As the four-rowed 
species is a poorer quality, it is raised only in the 


Three Kinds of Barley 


BARNACLE 


contained in the Easy Reference 


Fact-Index at the end of this work 
























HOW BAROMETERS MEASURE MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS 


Howthe barometer 
measures the weight 
of the air. 


Vacuum 


No air pressure. 
Column of mercury 
will rise in the tube 
until it balances 
pressure of air on 
mercury in bowl. 


heaviest at sea feve 
ometer stands at 29 


Haven’t you often wondered how men learn the height of mountains? You know you couldn’t measure straight down through a mountain! 
This picture shows one way in which it is done. The height of a mountain means its height above sea level. Now at sea level the barom¬ 
eter stands at 29.9 inches, but as the instrument is carried up higher and higher, the air pressure becomes less and less until, when you 
have reached three miles, say, it stands at 15 inches. The diagram on the right shows the principle of the barometer. The pressure of 
the air forces the mercury in the bowl up into the vacuum tube, until the weight of the column of mercury exactly balances that pressure, 
just as the pound of sugar the grocer puts into the scales balances the pound weight. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


332 


place 


see information 





























B AROM 'ETER. One day near the middle of the 17th 
century a German scientist, the mayor of Magdeburg, 
Otto von Guericke, who was always trying new and 
strange experiments, astonished his neighbors by 
erecting on the wall of his house a strange looking 
tube. The tube was something more than 34 feet 
long, and was made of brass except the top section, 
which was of glass. It was closed at the top. The 
lower end of the tube dipped in a basin of water, and 
the water was seen to rise in the tube to a height of 
about 30 feet. The top of this column of water* was 
seen through the glass and on it floated a quaint 
wooden manikin. “Von Guericke’s little weather 
man,” the people called it, for they saw that it rose 
higher in fair weather and went down in stormy 
weather. The neighbors thought it all a work of 
magic, but, as von Guericke’s book tells us, it was 
really a water barometer. 

Only a few years before Guericke was trying this 
interesting experiment, Torricelli, an Italian scholar 
who was a pupil of the famous Galileo, invented the 
mercury barometer, the form of the instrument now 
commonly in use. 

The barometer is an instrument for measuring the 
pressure of the air of the atmosphere. Mercury and 
not water is chosen because the greater weight of 
mercury reduces the length of the tube required to 
36 inches. To make a simple barometer, you take a 
glass tube of this length, closed at one end, and fill it 
with mercury. You then invert the tube, keeping the 
finger over the open end, and place the open end in 
a vessel of mercury. When the finger is removed, 
only a little of the mercury will run out of the tube 
into the vessel, for the pressure of the air upon the 
surface of the mercury in the vessel supports the 
weight of the column of mercury. The space in 
the tube above the column of mercury is nearly a 
perfect vacuum, so there is no pressure on top of the 
column. The mercury column in the tube remains 
about 30 inches high, and this means an air pressure 
of about 14.7 pounds to the square inch. By a 
graduated scale generally attached to the glass tube, 
we can measure the fluctuations in the height of the 
mercury resulting from changes in the air pressure. 

The air pressure varies in part with changes in 
weather conditions, and this makes the barometer of 
great importance in forecasting the weather (see 
Weather Bureau). Experience has shown that sud¬ 
den decrease of pressure, that is, a “falling barom¬ 
eter,” indicates the approach of a storm. Increasing 
pressure—a “rising barometer”—is a sign of fair 
weather. A steady “high barometer” denotes settled 
fair weather. 

The height of the barometer column also varies 
with the altitude. Thus when a barometer is carried 
to the top of a high tower, or up a mountain, the mer¬ 
cury falls lower and lower, because the air pressure 
decreases with the altitude. By comparing the read¬ 
ing at sea-level with readings at other levels, the altitude 
of any place can be readily calculated. Corrections 

contained in the Eaey Reference 


of course must be made for weather conditions. 

The mercury barometer is a fragile and awkward 
instrument to carry, so for portable use engineers 
and explorers generally use the aneroid barom¬ 
eter. This is also the instrument used in airplanes 
and balloons to determine altitudes. The aneroid 
consists of a closed metal box with an elastic flexible 
top, and it is arranged so that a pointer indicates even 
slight changes of pressure of the outside air on the 
top. Aneroids have to be graduated by comparison 
with a mercury barometer. 

BAR'RIE, Sir James Matthew (1860- ). A small 

man with a great heart, one of the shyest and most 
retiring persons, though his writings have brought the 
world to his feet, a man of insight and wisdom who 
has still kept the freshness and gaiety of childhood, a 
man of tenderness, kindly humor, playful wit, and 
whimsical fancy—this is J. M. Barrie. 

His birthplace was the little Scotch village of Kirrie¬ 
muir, described in his writings under the name of 
“Thrums.” There in the garret of his simple home 
he began to write stories of adventure before he was 
12. One of his chief tasks as a small lad—and for long 
afterward—was to cheer his mother when she was ill. 
In trying to make her laugh he developed that gift 
of humor, touched always with pathos, which is his 
greatest charm. From his mother, so he tells us in his 
beautiful story of her life, ‘Margaret Ogilvy’, he 
learned all that he put into his books, and under 
many names and with many changes of feature she 
appears as the heroine in almost every one of Barrie’s 
writings. From this charming Scotswoman Barrie 
inherited that whimsically sunny view of life which 
age or sorrow could not take from her. 

After being educated at Dumfries Academy and 
Edinburgh University, Barrie became a journalist, 
contributing to various English papers. He first won 
recognition by his stories of his native village, ‘Auld 
Licht Idylls’ and ‘A Window in Thrums’. His first 
long novel, ‘The Little Minister’, appeared in 1891 and 
was followed by two other successful novels, ‘Senti¬ 
mental Tommy’ and its sequel, ‘Tommy and Grizel’. 
Later he turned to the theater and produced a number 
of charming dramas, several of which—such as 
‘Quality Street’, ‘What Every Woman Knows’, ‘The 
Legend of Leonora’, ‘Peter Pan’, and ‘A Kiss for 
Cinderella’—have been delightfully interpreted on the 
American stage by Maude Adams. The beautiful 
fairy play ‘Peter Pan’ won for Barrie the title of “the 
Hans Christian Andersen of the stage.” 

Barrie’s chief works are as follows: ‘Auld Licht Idylls’ 
(1888); ‘A Window in Thrums’ (1889); ‘My Lady Nico¬ 
tine’ (1890); ‘The Little Minister’ (1891); ‘The Professor’s 
LoveStory’ (1895); ‘SentimentalTommy’,‘Margaret Ogilvy’ 
(1896); ‘Tommy and Grizel’ (1900); ‘The Little White 
Bird’ (1902); ‘Quality Street’, ‘The Admirable Crichton’, 
‘Little Mary’ (1903); ‘Peter Pan’ (1904); ‘Alice Sit-by-the- 
Fire’ (1905); ‘What Every Woman Knows’ (1908); ‘Peter 
and Wendy’ (1911); ‘The Legend of Leonora’ (1913); ‘Der 
Tag’ (1914); ‘A Kiss for Cinderella’ (1916); ‘The Old Lady 
Shows Her Medals’, ‘A Well-Remembered Voice’, ‘Dear 
Brutus’ (1917). 

act-index at the end of thit Work 













PETER PAN TO THE RESCUE! 



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“On the pirate ship Captain Hook had just dragged up his prisoners from the hold and was going to make them walk the plank. But all 
of a sudden the pirate heard something that changed his look of glee to one of terror. ‘Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick!’ ‘The crocodile!’he 
cried. ‘Hide me!’ It was Peter Pan coming to the aid of his comrades. The clever boy had imitated the ticking of the crocodile. The 

wicked Captain Hook found himself at the mercy of his enemy.” 


' n y subject not found in its alphabetical place see infor motion 

334 


For 









































C ]he BOY WHO WOULD NEVER GROW UP 


NCE upon a time there lived three little 
children named Wendy Moira Angela, 
John Napoleon, and Michael. Their 
parents were Mr. and Mrs. Darling; 
their nurse—strange as it may seem—was a big New¬ 
foundland dog. 

Mrs. Darling was glad to have this big brave dog 
to watch over the children, for one night something 
happened which made her feel very uneasy. She 
woke up suddenly and saw a strange figure, no bigger 
than a little boy, standing just inside the nursery 
window. Nana growled and sprang at the little boy, 
and he leaped lightly 
through the window. But 
he lost his shadow, for the 
good dog shut the window 
down so quickly that the 
shadow was snapped off. 

Mrs. Darling took the 
shadow, rolled it up care¬ 
fully, and put it in a 
drawer. Nana was a great 
treasure, she thought. But 
one night when Mr. Dar¬ 
ling was rather out of sorts, 
he said that it was ridicu¬ 
lous to keep a dog as nurse, 
and he dragged Nana off to 
her kennel in the yard. 

That very night, after 
Mr. and Mrs. Darling had 
gone out, Peter Pan—for 
he was the mysterious little 
boy—came back to look for 
his shadow. A bright spot 
of light darted before him, 
flitting about to every corner of the room, and 
making a tinkle as of golden bells. When it was still 
for a moment one could see that the light was really 
a little fairy girl. The tinkling sound was her way 
of speaking, and she was called Tinker Bell. She 

Adapted from the story of‘Peter Pan’by J. M. Barrie, by permis- 
sion of and special arrangement with Charles Scribner’s Sons, holders 
of the American copyright, and Hodder and Stoughton, holders of 
the British copyright. 


stopped at the chest of drawers and told Peter that 
his shadow was there. The boy ran to it and snatched 
out the shadow. But to his dismay, when he tried 
to put it on, it wouldn’t stick to him. At last giving 
up in despair, he burst into tears. 

His sobs woke Wendy. She sat up in bed and asked 
him his name and why he was crying. She knew at 
once what to do. She got a needle and thread and 
sewed on his shadow. Peter Pan strutted up and 
down with a cocky air, and danced about in wild glee, 
watching his shadow follow him as he moved. 

“How old are you, Peter?” queried Wendy. 

“I don’t know,” he re¬ 
plied, “but I am quite 
young. I ran away the day 
I was born.” 

“Ran away? Why?” 
“Because I heard my 
father and mother talking 
about what I was to be 
when I became a man. I 
don’t want ever to be a 
man. I want always to be 
a little boy and have fun. 
So I ran away to live among 
the fairies.” 

“Peter, do you really 
know fairies?” asked 
Wendy, wonderingly. 

“Yes, but they’re nearly 
all dead now. You see, 
when the first baby laughed, 
its laughter broke into a 
thousand pieces and each 
piece went skipping about, 
and that was the begin¬ 
ning of fairies. And now, whenever a new baby is 
born, its first laugh becomes a' fairy. But whenever 
a child says it does not believe in fairies, then one of 
the fairies dies.” 

Then Peter told Wendy that he lived in a place 
called Neverland, with the lost boys who had fallen 
out of their baby carriages when their nurses were 
looking the other way. He was their captain and 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

335 


‘Their nurse—strange as it may seem—was a big Newfound¬ 
land dog.” 














BARRIE 


Treachery of Pirate Hook 



they had great fun. There was just one thing they 
lacked—that was a mother to tuck them in at night 
and tell them stories. 

“Oh, Wendy,” he cried, “won’t you come and live 
with us and be our mother?” 

Wendy hesitated when she thought of her own 
mother, but Peter won her by telling her of the won¬ 
ders of Neverland, and by promising that he would 
teach her and John and Michael to fly. And so the 
two boys were awakened, and after Peter had sprin¬ 
kled them with fairy dust, they were able to fly 
far away through the depths of the starry night to 
the Neverland. 

Now the lost boys, who had been anxiously await¬ 
ing Peter’s return, were much surprised to see what 
appeared to be a lovely white bird flying toward them. 
While they were gazing at it, the fairy Tinker Bell 
approached, tinkling very loudly. She was telling 
them that Peter wanted them to shoot the bird at 
once. One of the boys fired at the bird. It fell to 
the ground, and then they saw it was not a bird at 
all, but a little girl. It was Wendy, who had come 
to be their mother. Tinker Bell had told them to do 
this dreadful thing because she loved Peter and was 
jealous of Wendy. 

But Wendy was not dead; she had only fainted. 
She soon revived, but still lay on the ground very 
weak and tired. The boys built around her a tiny 
house— 

The littlest ever seen 
With funny little red walls 
And roof of mossy green. 

They stuck on John’s tall hat for a chimney, and 
soon the smoke was rising cosily. 

Peter and Wendy and their little family were 
very happy together. Every night Wendy went to 
the underground home, down among the roots of the 
trees, where the boys lived. She told them stories 
and tucked them into their great bed before she went 
to her own little house. They had some very thrilling 
adventures, too, for there were wolves and pirates and 
Indians, as well as fairies in Neverland. 

The Pirate and the Crocodile that Ticked 

Captain Hook was the wickedest and fiercest of 
pirates. On his right arm, instead of a hand, he had 
an iron-pronged hook, and that is how he got his 
name. Some time before, in an encounter between 
the pirates and the lost boys, Peter had cut off his 
right arm and flung it to a passing crocodile. The 
crocodile had liked the taste of it so much that ever 
since he had wandered from land to land and from 
sea to sea licking his jaws for the rest of the captain. 

But fortunately for Hook, the crocodile had swal¬ 
lowed an alarm clock. This clock ticked so loudly 
that it could be heard through the crocodile’s skin, 
and so the pirate captain could always hear it coming. 
But Hook lived in terror lest the clock should run 
down and the crocodile come up and swallow him 
before he heard a sound. 

No wonder Captain Hook hated Peter Pan, who 


mm^[ 

was the cause of all his troubles. But so far he and 
the boys, aided by the Indians, who were their 
friends, had escaped the clutches of the pirates. 

One evening while the faithful Indians were keeping 
guard without, Wendy, as usual, was telling the boys 
a story before tucking them into bed. This time the 
story was about her own father and mother and the 
children who had flown away. She told them how 
lonely and sad Mr. and Mrs. Darling must be, and 
how they would always keep the nursery window open 
in case the children should come flying home. 

Then Poor Little Peter Groaned! 

But when she had finished, Peter gave a groan. He 
felt that he must tell the truth. “ Long ago,” he said, 
“I thought like you that my mother would always 
keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for 
moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but 
the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all 
about me, and there was another little boy sleeping 
in my bed.” 

Perhaps it was not true, but Peter thought it was, 
and it scared the children. 

“John! Michael!” cried Wendy, “we must go back 
at once.” 

The lost boys begged her not to leave them. Peter 
wanted her most of all, but he refused to show his 
feelings. 

Then Wendy suggested that the boys all come too. 
She felt sure that her mother and father would be 
glad to adopt them. The boys were delighted with 
the idea of having a real father and mother—all except 
Peter Pan. Though his heart ached at the thought 
of losing Wendy, he wouldn’t consent to live in a real 
house and grow up like ordinary boys. 

The last thing the little mother did before leaving 
was to pour out Peter’s medicine and make him 
promise to take it. And so they said good-by to 
Peter Pan. 

But now a terrible thing happened. The pirates 
had driven away the Indians and were lying in wait 
for the children. They pounced upon them as soon as 
they came out, and carried them prisoners to the 
pirate ship. 

Hook, annoyed at not finding Peter among them, 
went to the cave in search of him. Poor Peter, after 
a forlorn attempt to prove to himself that he was not 
lonely, had at last fallen asleep. Thus Hook found 
his old enemy defenseless. When he caught sight of 
Peter’s medicine standing on a ledge within easy 
reach, a terrible red light came into his eye. He 
poured into it a few drops of deadly poison and stole 
away. 

“Don’t Drink! Don’t Drink!’’ Cried Tinker Bell 

Peter awoke and was just about to take his medi¬ 
cine, when he heard a tinkling voice, “Don’t drink! 
Don’t drink!” It was Tinker Bell speaking. 

“Don’t be silly,” said Peter, and he raised the 
glass to his lips. But just as he was about to drain 
it, he saw a shining light in the glass. Then he knew 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 







1 All Safe Home at Last! 

that Tinker Bell had drunk the poison to save him. 
She was dying. There was just one way to save her. 

“Do you believe in fairies?” he cried to all the 
children in the world. “If you believe, clap your 
hands and save Tinker Bell.” 

There was a clapping of many hands, and Tinker 
Bell revived. She told Peter 
about Wendy and the boys, and 
immediately Peter set off to 
rescue them, swearing this terrible 
oath, “Hook or me this time!” 

On the pirate ship Captain 
Hook had just dragged up his 
prisoners from the hold, and was 
going to make them walk the 
plank. But all of a sudden the 
pirate heard something that 
changed his look of glee to one 
of terror. “Tick! Tick! Tick! 

Tick!” 

“The crocodile!” he cried. 

“Hide me!” 

The terrified crew gathered 
around their captain. The boys 
looked toward the ship’s side, 
expecting to see the crocodile 
climbing over it. But instead of 
a crocodile, they saw—Peter, 
coming to their aid. The clever 
boy had imitated the ticking of 
the crocodile. 

TheTerrible Fight that Peter Won 

There was a terrible fight be¬ 
tween the pirates and Peter’s 
band. Some of the pirates, panic- 
stricken, jumped overboard. The 
rest of the crew were cut down. 

The wicked Captain Hook found 

himself at thp merev of his olrl “ His sobs woke Wend y- 
mmseii ai me mercy oi ms orn She knew at once what t0 

enemy Peter Pan. Step by step Pan strutted up and down 

Peter forced the pirate chief to 

the side of the ship, till Hook in desperation thought 

some fiend was fighting him. 

“Pan, who are you?” he cried huskily. 

“I’m youth—eternal youth!” cried Peter exul¬ 
tantly. “I’m the sun rising—I’m poets singing—I’m 
the new world—I’m a little bird that has broken out 
of his egg—I’m joy, joy, joy!” 

With that he wrenched the sword out of Hook’s 
hand, and pushed him overboard, right into the open 
jaws of the waiting crocodile. 

Peter was now in command of the ship, and the 
children sailed homeward. Their home had been a 
very sad place while they were away. Mr. Darling, 
to punish himself for taking away the children’s 
nurse, had insisted upon sleeping in Nana’s kennel. 
Mrs. Darling had thought of them day and night, 
and always left the window open. 

And now at last the children were enfolded in their 
dear mother’s arms. Peter watched them wistfully 


barton] 


from outside the window. He had many joys un¬ 
known to ordinary children, but this happiness was 
not for him. Mrs. Darling wanted to adopt him 
along with the other boys. But no. Peter wanted 
very much to have a mother, and he loved Wendy 
dearly, but he couldn’t bear the thought of growing 

WENDY SEWING ON PETER’S SHADOW 


She sat up in bed and asked him his name and why he was crying, 
do. She got a needle and thread and sewed on his shadow. Peter 
with a cocky air and danced about in wild glee, watching his shadow 
follow him as he moved.” 

up. Wendy’s mother was so moved at the thought 
of Peter living all alone that she offered to let Wendy 
go to him for a week every year to do his spring 
cleaning. 

As the years went on the children all grew up and 
became men and women; but not Peter. High up 
in the tree-tops in Neverland, the fairies placed the 
little house that had been built for Wendy, and there 
Peter Pan lives on and on and on, with Tinker 
Bell. 

BARTON, Clara (1821-1912). Although she grew 
up to be one of the bravest and most capable women 
that ever lived, Clara Barton, the founder of the 
American Red Cross, was painfully timid and bashful 
as a little girl. Born and brought up on a farm near 
Oxford, Mass., she was fond of all outdoor sports 
and could ride any horse, but she was afraid to meet 
strangers, afraid to recite in school, afraid of herself. 
Only in thinking of others who were in pain and 


the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

337 


contained in 



















BARTON 


BASEBALL 


distress did she forget about herself and become so 
fearless that even the battlefield had no terrors for 
her. About 50 years of her life were spent amid 
scenes of suffering and death. 

As a teacher, although her shyness almost got the 
better of her the first day, she won her pupils 
through her love and 
sympathy and became 
very successful. Later 
she proved her executive 
ability as a clerk in 
the United States Patent 
Office, where she was 
the first woman to be 
placed in charge of a 
department. 

When still a mere child, 

Miss Barton had nursed 
an elder brother back to 
health after a serious 
accident, and through 
this experience she had 
learned much about the 
art of nursing. At the 
outbreak of the Civil 
War she volunteered for 
hospital service, and 
soon this gentle, timid 
little woman was caring 
for the wounded soldiers, 
close behind the firing line, 
where she won the title of “The Angel of the Battle¬ 
field.” After the war she searched hospitals, prisons, 
and battlefields for missing soldiers, carrying on this 
work at her own expense until she received an appoint¬ 
ment from President Lincoln. 

In 1869 Miss Barton went to Europe for a much 
needed rest; but when the Franco-Prussian War 
broke out, in the following year, she at once gave 
her services in relief work. Through her efforts the 
American Red Cross was organized in 1881, and she 
became its first president (see Red Cross). From 
that time until she retired in 1904, wherever fire, 
flood, earthquake, pestilence brought suffering to be 
relieved, her activity was unremitting. She also wrote 
a history of the Red Cross, and other works. 

“I have no mission,” she once said. “I have never 
had a mission. But I have always had more work 
than I could do lying around my feet and I try hard 
to get it out of the way so as to go on and do the next.” 
BASEBALL. Someone has said that America and 
baseball met each other when they were young and 
grew up together. The ancestor of the game was the 
old English “rounders,” which to the early American 
settlers was known as “town ball.” Modern base¬ 
ball originated with the old Knickerbocker Club of 
New York City, which published the first rule book 
in 1845. From that time the game, while undergoing 
many changes, steadily increased its hold upon the 
boys and men of America. 


When the Civil War broke out, the game became 
a favorite camp pastime, and was played by the 
soldiers in gray as well as by the boys in blue. At 
the close of the war it was carried by returning soldiers 
to every section of the country, north and south. 
Thus it may be said with accuracy that baseball as 
the national sport of the 
United States dates from 
the Civil War. 

Amateur and profes¬ 
sional clubs sprang up in 
the 70’s and 80’s with 
ever-increasing rapidity. 
In 1871 the National 
League was formed, and 
in 1900 the American 
League. In addition to 
these two “major” profes¬ 
sional leagues there are a 
number of “minor” leagues 
scattered throughout the 
country. Following the 
competition which results 
in the winning of the two 
league championships, 
there is a “world series” 
in which the winner in 
each league competes for 
the championship honors 
of the world. 

The immense crowds 
that attend these struggles attest the popularity of 
America’s national game. It is not at all uncommon 
for 40,000 persons to witness one of these games. 
Players and spectators are keyed to the highest 
pitch of excitement and rivalry, yet it is rarely that 
any unsportsmanlike incident occurs. Baseball is a 
clean sport and it is greatly to the credit of the men 
who have built up the professional game that the 
play in the leagues is so largely free from rowdyism 
and unfair tactics. 

Now, Watch This Game 

The baseball field is laid out in the form of a 
diamond 90 feet on each side, with bases at each of 
three corners and the “pitcher’s box” 60 feet 5 inches 
from the “home plate” (or fourth base), on a line 
between home plate and second base (see diagram). 
At the start of the game the nine players who compose 
one of the teams take their positions on the field, 
while the other team, in fixed succession, come to 
bat. In the early days the ball weighed 6 L 2 ounces 
and measured 103 ^ inches around, but today the 
official ball weighs 5 ounces and is 9 inches in cir¬ 
cumference. At first the rules obliged the pitcher to 
“pitch” the ball from below the shoulder level, but 
now he may “deliver” almost any sort of a ball 
(pitched or thrown, swift or slow, incurve, outcurve, 
drop, “fade-away,” etc.), provided he remains in his 
position and does not commit a “balk” or feint. 
Each time the batter swings at the ball and fails to 


DIAGRAM OF A BASEBALL FIELD 


CENTER 

FIELD 



This diagram shows just how a baseball field is laid out and why it 
is called a “diamond.” You are standing back of the home plate 
and looking out towards center field. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

338 








the third and fourth rows show the “out” curve and the “drop” curve. The 
to throw. In spite of their tricks the runner in the second picture has made 
second row we may suppose he has safely reached it, while the unfortunate 
various additional features of the thrilling American national game. 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 


Rtcj^r^ delivc iy 


C*rc^er'5 Signal 
i| for ° 


'.Drop Cu rve 


pojitiorv 


Baffitr' 


Balter 

starting 

for |*T 


(eftljond 

PicICup 


339 



































BASEBALL 



——-—- 

How Curves are Pitched 


hit it, a “ strike” is counted against him. Three of 
these strikes put him out and he retires to the bench 
while another player of his team takes his place. 
When the pitcher throws the ball across the home 
plate not lower than the batter’s knee or higher 
than his shoulder and the batter makes no attempt 
to hit it, the umpire, who stands behind the pitcher 
or the catcher, calls a 
“strike.” If the pitcher 
misses the plate, or 
throws above the batter’s 
shoulder or below his knee, 
the umpire calls a “ball.” 

Four “balls” give the bat¬ 
ter a “pass” to first base. 

The batter’s object 
usually is to make a fair 
hit—a ball batted within 
the lines that run from 
home to first base and 
home to third and beyond. 

A “bunt” is a short hit 
into the infield without 
swinging at the ball; a 
sacrifice hit is a hit which 
puts the batsman out but 
advances a runner on 
bases. All other hits are 
fouls; they count as strikes 
except on the third strike, 
in which case they are not 
counted. If the fielders 
fail to catch a fair ball 
before it touches the 
ground, or fail to throw 
it to the first baseman 
before the batter reaches 
first base, he is “safe.” 

He may continue on to 
second, third, and home so 
long as he is not touched 
while between bases by 
the ball in the hand of one 
of the fielders, or hit by a 
batted ball, or “forced 
out” at one of the bases. 

How a Batter is Put Out 

If the fielders succeed in 
catching a fair or a foul 
hit before it touches the ground, the batter is out. 
He is also out if they succeed in fielding a fair hit to 
the first baseman before the batter reaches first base. 
If a player crosses the home plate without being put 
out, he scores a run; if he makes the complete circuit 
of the bases on a single hit it is a “home run.” 

The team at bat continues to play until three of 
its men have been put out. It then exchanges places 
with the team in the field which now takes its turn 
at bat. The “inning” ends when each side has had 
three outs scored against it. Nine innings constitute 


a game, except in the case of a tie score, when the 
game continues until one side or the other at the 
close of an inning retains a lead. 

Why the Pitcher is Such a Great Man 
The most important man on the team is the pitcher. 
His ability to strike out the opposing batters or to 
compel them to hit the ball into the hands of the 

fielders is of tremendous 
advantage to his team. 
A good pitcher is able to 
puzzle batters in many 
ways. For example, he 
may be clever at chang¬ 
ing pace, throwing first a 
swift ball and then a slow 
one, or vice versa, with 
identically the same ap¬ 
parent motion,, in order 
to prevent the batter 
from timing his swing 
effectively. A big league 
pitcher sends the leather- 
covered sphere across the 
plate with startling swift¬ 
ness and remarkable ac¬ 
curacy. His whole act of 
throwing is done in such a 
way as to put every ounce 
of his body into the pitch. 
To the person who is 
ignorant of the long years 
of practice that he has 
spent in developing this 
ability, his skill seems 
marvelous. 

His Marvelous Curves! 
The most wonderful 
thing he does is to throw 
a ball that curves up or 
down or in or out at his 
will. The whole trick lies 
in the spinning motion he 
gives the ball as it leaves 
his hand. An outcurve is 
one that breaks to the 
catcher’s right and the 
spinning motion is in the 
same direction, that is, 
from left to right. There 
are several ways of delivering the ball to do this. 
The common one is to grasp the ball between the 
two front fingers and the thumb and as the throwing 
arm comes to the front the wrist is turned to bring 
the palm up and the ball is released sharply between 
the first finger and the thumb. The same hold with 
a slight shift in the position of the wrist and of 
releasing the ball will give a different spin and a 
different curve. The theory is that the greater pres¬ 
sure of the resisting air on the side towards which 
the ball is rotating forces it from a straight course. 


THIS IS HOW YOU READ A BOX SCORE 


CHICAGO 


AB 

R 

BH 

PO 

A 

E 

Leibold, rf. 

. 5 

0 

2 

2 

0 

0 

E. Collins, 2b... 

. 5 

0 

1 

1 

4 

0 

Weaver, 3b. 

. 5 

0 

0 

1 

5 

0 

Jackson, If. 

. 5 

2 

2 

2 

0 

0 

Felsh, cf. 

. 4 

2 

2 

1 

1 

0 

J. Collins, lb. . . 

. 4 

2 

2 

14 

0 

0 

Risberg, ss . 

. 5 

0 

1 

1 

3 

0 

Schalk, c. 

. 4 

1 

2 

4 

0 

0 

Kerr, p. 

. 3 

1 

0 

1 

4 

0 

Totals. . . 

. 40 

8 

12 

27 

17 

0 

NEW YORK 


AB 

R 

BH 

PO 

A 

E 

Peckinpaugh, ss. 

. 4 

2 

2 

0 

2 

1 

Pipp, lb. 

. 3 

1 

1 

12 

1 

0 

Pratt, 2b. 

. 4 

0 

1 

1 

3 

1 

Ruth, If. 

. 3 

2 

2 

3 

0 

0 

Meusel, rf. 

. 4 

0 

1 

2 

0 

0 

Bodie, cf. 

. 4 

0 

2 

2 

0 

0 

W T ard, 3b. 

. 4 

0 

1 

2 

5 

0 

Hannah, c. 

. 3 

0 

0 

4 

1 

2 

Thormahlen, p.. 

. 2 

0 

0 

0 

1 

0 

Shore, p. 

. 0 

0 

0 

0 

1 

0 

*Lewis. 

. 1 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

McGraw, p. 

. 0 

0 

0 

1 

0 

0 

Totals... 

. 32 

5 

10 

27 

14 

4 

*Batted for Shore in eighth. 






Chicago. 

.0100 

0 

0 

3 4 

0- 

-8 

New York. 

.0 0 0 2 

0 

1 

0 1 

1- 

-5 


To save space newspapers print the results of baseball games in the 
form of compact tables, which contain almost as much information 
to the initiated as could be given in a column of description. The 
“box score” above summarizes the plays in a game between Chicago 
(White Sox) and New York. The meanings of the abbreviations 
after the names of the players are as follows: cf., center field; If., 
left field; 3, third base; 2, second base; 1, first base; rf., right fieid; 
ss., short stop; c., catcher; and p., pitcher. The abbreviations at the 
head of the column of figures stand for: ab., at bat; r., run; bh., 
base hits; po., put-outs; a., assists; e., errors. Ruth, for example, 
was at bat 3 times. He made 2 runs, 2 base hits, 3 put-outs, no 
assists, and no errors. The score by innings shows that New York, 
in the fourth inning, made 2 runs and that Chicago, in the seventh, 
made 3 and in the eighth made 4, the final score being 8 to 5 in 
favor of Chicago. This particular score is especially striking as 
Ruth’s two hits were both home runs, making his total home runs 31 
in midseason and breaking his record for the whole previous season. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

340 




































| Baseball Around the World 


BASKET| 


The next important man on the team is the catcher, 
who usually acts as the “general” of the nine. He 
stands behind the home plate, encased in his mask, 
chest protector, and shin guards, and with a heavily 
padded glove on one hand receives the bullet-like 
pitches of his teammate. He has many opportuni¬ 
ties to save the game for his team. But for that 
matter every member of the nine, by good hitting 
or clever fielding, may play an important part in the 
winning of a victory. Each team has an elaborate 
system of signals for the batter and runners, meaning 
“Hit it out,” “Wait,” “Steal base,” “Bunt or 
sacrifice,” and the like. 

The game of baseball as developed to its highest 
perfection in the professional leagues and in the 
colleges calls for physical alertness, speed, skill, good 
eyesight, courage, and ability to think quickly. No 
game is exactly like another, and it often happens 
that baseball strategy or “inside play,” as it is known, 
wins the contest at the crucial moment. The game 
is almost as popular in Canada as in the United States, 
and it is spreading in Australia, the Philippines, and 
Japan. Chinese players have become quite expert 
at baseball. 

The A B C of Good Ball Playing 

Every boy wants to be a ball player and a good 
one. Very well. Practice will do it. Play ball and 
play it often. But begin early to think what you are 
doing and to improve in the four things that, if you 
excel in them, will help you make the team. The 
four things are batting, catching, throwing, and 
running the bases. 

A good batter, a steady consistent hitter, will make 
any team. Learn to bat. Select a bat you can 
swing with your wrists and forearms. Don’t try to 
“slug” the ball with all your might but learn to meet 
it squarely with a sharp short swing that you get 
your body weight behind. This means that you 
must never pull away from the plate by drawing back 
the foot nearest the pitcher. Hold that foot still 
at any cost. Watch the ball. Don’t try too much 
to guess what the pitcher will throw—fast, slow, or 
curve. You may out-guess him, but a trained eye 
and quick decision are better than a few lucky hits. 

Never allow yourself to begin batting overhanded, 
with the outside hand above the one on the catcher’s 
side. Try standing on the other side of the plate if 
you cannot correct this any other way. 

Practice “bunting” with a loose grip and no swing. 
But bunt only when the runners on bases know your 
plan by a signal, or when the opposing infield is 
playing back and looking for a swift hit. Send the 
ball to the ground on a bunt. What is called a 
“pop fly,” may be fatal. 

Have confidence. Just know you are going to hit 
even if you have two strikes. 

Catching a fly or picking up a grounder right comes 
only with practice. Be poised to start as soon as 
the ball is hit. See that your hands give way so the 
fly ball will not jump out. Don’t scoop up a grounder 


with a motion against the ball. Ease back with a 
motion that brings you in a position to throw with¬ 
out loss of time. If you are an infielder or catcher, 
practice a snap throw that will not oblige you to 
draw your arm back of the shoulder in a long swing. 
Get in front of the ball with your heels together if 
you can. Don’t throw wildly just to get rid of the 
ball. Go after every ball and never mind errors. 
You can’t be a sign post and a good fielder at the 

same time. „ , . „ 

Secret of the Pitcher s Art 

Throwing, including pitching, is first of all control— 
ability to throw where you want to. If you want to 
be a pitcher, get control and leave curves and speed 
to follow. Practice with a batter or a post so you 
can throw to the shoulders, knees, waist, to the inside 
or outside corners of the plate, as you choose. De¬ 
velop an easy shoulder swing that gets your weight 
behind the throw and work until you have the same 
motion for all curves and speeds. 

As a fielder, think where you should throw the 
ball before any batted ball has been hit to you. In 
general this is to first base or always to the base 
ahead of the foremost runner, who will be forced by 
the batter to move up. If an outfielder, don’t try to 
throw to the catcher on the fly. It may go over his 
head and cost the game. A throw that reaches him 
on the bound is safer and quicker. 

Running the bases, ability to “steal a base,” is as 
much quick starting and skillful sliding as it is speed. 
Practice both, especially a feet-first slide that enables 
you to hook the bag and get away from or under the 
baseman with,the ball. Know whether the next base 
is occupied before you start to steal. Don’t run 
blindly on a fly hit unless two are out. Otherwise 
move down the base line so you can go ahead or back 
depending on whether or not the ball is caught. 
Know at all times where the ball is and keep awake 
and on your toes and listen to the coach. 

Above all, play the game fairly and squarely and 
never give up. Obey the coach and the captain. 
Don’t wrangle with the umpire or play to the gal¬ 
leries. Every place on the team is important and 
to play well the part assigned you is the main thing. 

Team play, “inside” baseball, and signals—the 
whole strategy of the game is too complex to explain 
here, but help can be obtained from various manuals 
or from an experienced coach. 

BASKET. Who were the first basket-makers? 
Probably the birds, whose instinct taught them to 
weave into cozy nests the materials which nature gave 
them. Men have learned from them or may have 
been led by the same instinct to intertwine branches 
and twigs, stems and rushes, the flexible inner bark of 
trees, and tough grasses. At any rate they first used 
basketry, like the birds, to build their homes, for rude 
huts fashioned in this way were among the earliest 
forms of shelter. Then later, but still so long ago 
that we have no idea how far back in the dim and 
distant past it was, they learned to weave these 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

341 









[ 


BASKET 


Cooking in a Basket ( 




materials into useful and beautiful 
vessels for storing and carrying food, 
and for many other purposes. 

Baskets made 6,000 years ago have 
been dug up from the dry sands of 
Egypt. When the Romans visited 
Britain in the first century before 
Christ, they found the natives already 
very proficient in the making of 
baskets of willows, or osiers, much 
like those still 
made there today. 

Indeed it is from 
these early Celtic 
inhabitants of 
Britain that we 
get our English 
word “basket.” 

Basket-making 
has been found 
among all primi¬ 
tive peoples and is 
one of the most 
ancient of all the 
arts. As the earliest 
form of weaving, 
it may be regarded 
as the parent of 
cloth-making and 
all other textile 
industries. It is 
related to pottery, 
also, for the first 
clay vessels are 
believed to have 
been made by 
smearing clay on 
baskets and bak¬ 
ing in the fire. 

Among the American Indians, especially the 
western tribes, the art of basket-weaving reached 
its highest development and was of the greatest 


importance. The new-born babe was 
placed in a cradle woven of basketry, 
and baskets were used in the burial 
of the dead. Almost every domestic 
necessity was supplied by the basket. 
They were even used to carry water. 
“How can water be carried in a 
basket?” you will ask. Some of the 
water-baskets were coated with gum 
to make them water-tight, but others 
were so tightly 
woven that even 
without this coat¬ 
ing they would 
hold water. With 
or without a lining 
of clay, baskets 
were used in cook¬ 
ing; of course they 
could not be placed 
over the fire, but 
hot stones were 
dropped into them 
to bring the water 
in them to a boil. 

Basketry was 
also used in mak¬ 
ing various articles 
of clothing. San¬ 
dals made of it 
were used by some 
tribes instead of 
moccasins of hide. 
Head baskets, 
serving for protec¬ 
tion from the sun 
and rain as well as 
for adornment, 
were the predeces¬ 
sors of the straw hats we now wear in summer. 

Captain John Smith speaks of shields and armor 
used by the Indians in warfare which were woven so 


Apache basket water-jars like these are 
made water-tight by coating with thin 
pitch. The outside is kept white with 
white earth. Thongs of leather or 
plaited hair are frequently added for 
carrying. 


For five thousand years mankind has be 
upright spokes into a frame and weaving i 
machine here shown has been perfected 
drawn from the spools on ea 


i making baskets by hand, sticking the 
>ss-strips through them, but recently the 
As the machine revolves the wicker is 
side and into the shuttles. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

342 









































The Art in Indian Baskets 


BASKETBALL 


firmly that no arrow could pierce them. Basket 
boats were used by the Indians, as they were by 
the early Britons, and as they are to this day on the 
Tigris and Euphrates rivers (see Boats). 

It was the woman of the household who made the 
baskets. She was the burden-bearer, and she early 
learned to weave vessels that were light yet strong 
and durable for carrying clay from the quarry, water 
from the spring, 

stones for grinding THE FIVE STEPS IN 

meal, firewood, 
fruits, seeds, roots, 
fish, flesh, and fowl 
to supply the 
household needs. 

But she did not 
stop with this. 

Savage and uncul¬ 
tured as she was, 
the Indian squaw 
had a sense of 
beauty, and this 
she expressed in 
her baskets. She 
learned to extract 
dyes from roots 
and berries to color 
them. She made 
ornaments of shells 
and stones to dec¬ 
orate them. She 






Whether you live in the country or in town—for there is plenty of material to be had 
in both places—boys and girls can get a great deal of pleasure as well as training in 
skill of hand from making baskets. These pictures show the five steps in the 
process, as explained in the text. 


stole the feathers of birds—the 
red of the woodpecker’s crest, the orange of the oriole, 
the green of the mallard duck—to make more gorgeous 
the precious gift-baskets known as “jewels.” 

Most beautiful of all were the designs wrought into 
the baskets. Look at a collection of Indian baskets, 
and you will see how many of these designs represent 
objects in nature—the rainbow, the flowing water, 
the zigzag lightning, mountains, trees, flowers, birds, 
and animals. You will see, too, strange symbols, 
which if you could read them would tell of witchcraft 
and magic, legends of gods and heavenly beings. Into 
her baskets the weaver put her feelings, her dreams, 
and her prayers, the traditions and ideals of her race. 

How You Can Make a Simple Basket 
Boys and girls through patience and practice can learn 
to make beautiful baskets with simple materials and a very 
few tools. Those who live in the country can utilize some 
of the native materials used by the Indians—peeled twigs 
of the willow, or osier, split cat-tail leaves, flags and rushes, 
the tougher grasses, etc. Those who live in the city or 
who do not wish to take the trouble of preparing the native 
plants may use prepared materials, such as rattan and raffia. 

Rattan is a vine-like palm which grows in the forests of 
India, twining about trees and hanging from the branches 
and sometimes reaching a length of several hundred feet. 

Before it comes to us it is stripped of leaves and bark and 
split into round or flat strips of various sizes, often called 
reeds. Raffia is a fiber obtained from the gigantic leaves 
of a palm that grows on the island of Madagascar. It 
comes to us in long strips that are very tough and pliable. 

In basket-making it is sometimes used alone, but more 
often in connection with rattan. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the 

343 


Here are directions for making a simple rattan basket. 
A heavier rattan should always be used for the spokes or 
ribs of the basket than for the weaving cane. The only 
tools needed are a pair of strong sharp shears, a ruler for 
measuring, and a deep pail for water. 

Cut from the heavy rattan four 14-inch spokes and one 
8-inch spoke. Have ready one of the finer reeds, to be used 
as the weaving cane, which you have previously soaked for 
an hour in cold water or fifteen minutes in hot. Arrange 
and cross the spokes as shown in Fig. 1, inserting the 8-inch 

or half spoke between 
MAKING A BASKET the halves of one pair 

of spokes. 

Hold the spokes in 
position by the left 
hand, and taking the 
weaving cane in the 
right hand bind it 
firmly about them as 
shown in the dia¬ 
gram, going twice 
around. Then sep¬ 
arate the spokes so 
that they radiate at 
equal distances in all 
directions, as shown 
in Fig. 2. Now begin 
the weaving—that is, 
pass the weaving 
cane over one and 
under thenext spoke, 
going from left to 
right. The spokes 
should be very even¬ 
ly separated and the 
weaving cane pressed 
down firmly with the 
forefinger as it is brought around. Upon the care with 
which you do this will depend the strength and beauty of 
your basket. 

When you have a mat or base several inches in diameter, 
wet the spokes and bend them sharply upward to make the 
sides of the basket. If the basket is to have straight sides 
the spokes should be bent at right angles; if sloping sides, 
at an oblique angle. In weaving the sides care should be 
taken to press each row close to the one before it. Two or 
more weaving canes will be needed to complete this basket. 
When the first weaving cane runs out, leave about half an 
inch behind a spoke and cross this with an equal length of 
the new weaving cane, as in Fig. 3. 

To finish the edge of the basket, cut the spokes to an 
even length of about three inches beyond the weaving and 
trim each to a point. Hold the ends in water for a few 
minutes to make them pliable. Now turn back each spoke 
the opposite way from which you have been weaving and 
insert the point beyond the next spoke. Bend downward 
at least an inch below the edge of the weaving so that it 
will remain firmly in place, and press the top level with the 
last line of weaving. 

BASKETBALL. Like lacrosse and hockey, basket¬ 
ball is an exceedingly fast game. It requires speed, 
ability to dodge with extreme quickness, and a keen 
eye for the goal. It was invented in 1891 at the 
training school of the Young Men’s Christian Asso¬ 
ciation in Springfield, Mass., by James Naismith, in 
response to a demand for a game that could be played 
indoors in winter to take the place of baseball and 
football. With surprising rapidity it spread to 
schools, colleges, and athletic clubs all over the 
United States, and after a time made its way across 
the Atlantic to the British Isles. 

of this work 




















| BASKETBALL 



The game may be played either indoors or outdoors 
on any level space on which a rectangular court, not 
exceeding 4,000 square feet, can be marked out. At 
each end of the court there is a 
goal ten feet above the ground in 
the form of a metal ring, 18 
inches in diameter, with a net 
of cord suspended from its rim. 

The ball is a leather sphere, 30 
to 32 inches in diameter, with an 
inflated rubber bladder inside. 

Here We Get into the Game 

There are five players on a team 
—a center, two forwards, and two 
guards. At the start of the game 
the referee goes to the middle of 
the court and tosses up the ball 
between the opposing centers. 

Each team then tries to throw 
the ball into its opponent’s goal, 
and every time it succeeds, scores 
two points. It is permissible to 
bat the ball with the hands and 
to throw it, but it may not be 
carried, kicked, or punched. No 
player may tackle, push, or hold 
an opponent. When a player 
breaks one of the rules, the 
opposing side is given one free throw for the 
basket from a distance of not less than 15 feet. One 
point is allowed for each goal so secured. If, when 


a team is making one of these free tries for the goal, 
the ball fails to fall through the basket, it is automatic¬ 
ally in play and the game continues as before. After 

For any subject not found in itt 


Changes in the Game [ 

each goal is scored, the referee puts the ball in play 
again, by tossing it into the air between the two 
centers, as at the beginning of the game. If any 
player sends the ball outside the 
boundaries of the court, either 
by throwing it or by batting it 
with his hands, the referee blows 
his whistle and gives the ball to a 
member of the opposing team, 
who then endeavors to throw it 
into the court in such a way that 
one of his team-mates will secure it. 
Team Work is the Thing 
In the early years of the game 
it used to be the practice for the 
two guards to limit themselves, 
for the most part to the task of 
protecting their goal from the 
attack of the opponents. The 
two forwards were trained to 
carry the offensive against the 
enemy and were not expected to 
act as guards. The center was 
the “rover” of the team and sup¬ 
ported the guards or the forwards 
whenever they needed assistance. 
Now, however, as the best teams 
play the game, there is very 
little difference between the duties of guards, 
forwards, and centers. The team plays as a unit, 
taking the offensive when necessary, and whenever 
possible forcing the play 
toward the opposing 
team’s goal. It is not un¬ 
common for the guards 
of a good team to score 
more points than the 
forwards. Team play, 
as in so many other 
sports, is the vital ele¬ 
ment. The basketball 
five that guards together, 
passes together, and 
shoots together is the 
team that usually wins. 

The rule that no play¬ 
er may carry the ball 
forward or backward 
makes basketball very 
largely a passing game. 
The ball moves back and 
forth from one player to 
another with great rapid¬ 
ity, and all five mem¬ 
bers of the team are 
constantly on the move, 
seeking to elude their 
opponents. Although it is forbidden to carry the 
ball, a player may “ dribble”—that is bounce the 
ball back and forth between his hands and the floor 

alphabetical place see information 


HOW A BASKETBALL COURT 
IS LAID OUT 



A BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME IN FRANCE 



P m J ere !?u 0t ? from the StorPoint of outdoor sport and history. It shows one of 
the championship games played by American troops in France in July 1919. The man in the center has 
just made a free try for goal. If the ball enters the basket, his side sco“es a goal 

















BAT 





in such a way that it keeps pace with him as he 
dashes towards his opponents’ goal. When he is 
within “shooting” distance, he seizes the ball and 
sends it upward toward the basket. A good dribbler 
is an important asset for any team. 

Difference between “Boy” and “Girl” Basketball 

The main difference between basketball as played 
by boys and the game as usually played by girls is 
that in the latter there is a restriction against 
the players’ running from one end of the court to the 
other. The guards have stations from which they 
are not allowed to move, and the other players are 
restricted in a similar manner. In many girls’ camps, 
and in schools that are equipped with outdoor basket¬ 
ball courts, the regulation form of the game is fol¬ 
lowed, for it has been found that if the play periods 
are not too long, the girls are as well able to cover the 
whole court as the boys. 

BASS, a common fresh-water fish related to the 
perch. The black bass, which is found only in 
American waters, is among the finest game fishes of 
the world. (See Fish.) 

Bat. What animal is man’s nearest relative among 
all the native creatures of the United States? You 
would never guess that it is the weird night-loving 
bat, the mouselike creature with the dragon wings. 

Scientists tell us that as we go down the scale of 
life we come first to the apes, then to the lemurs—the 
fox-faced monkeys of Madagascar and other tropical 

THE WINGED NIGHT-POLICEMEN ON THEIR ROUNDS 


The Noctules, or Great Bats—you can tell them by their large size 
and broad rounded ears—are among the first to go on duty chasing 
insects on summer evenings. Like other bats, the Noctule is no 
hand for walking, but when it does walk it takes the queer position 
shown. 


This is a Collared Fruit Bat carrying her baby, which clings 
to her fur, hanging upside down just as its mother does. 

countries—and then to the bats. But no monkeys or 
lemurs have their natural home in the United States, 
so that leaves us with the bat as our nearest cousin. 

At first sight we are ashamed of our relative. He’s 
certainly not handsome, nor does he look very intel¬ 
ligent as he hangs upside-down from a twig, blinking 
his beady little eyes in the daylight. But wait; you’ll 
admire him more when you learn to know him better. 
Do you see those strange wings of thin dark 
skin which the bat wraps around him like a cloak? 
These are perhaps the most delicate sense organs 
in the world. Take the bat in your hand. He 
won’t hurt you if you’re gentle and avoid that 
frightened snarling mouth. You’ll feel the 
small creature trembling all over. That’s 
because, to those sensitive wings, the touch 
of your palm is like a rasping file. 

Wings that “See” in the Dark 
Those wings and his big vibrating ears 
are the mystery and wonder of the bat. 
They enable him to fly in the darkest 
night, through the thickest forest, when 
his eyes are of little use to him, and 
pursue his insect prey without striking a 
single trunk or branch. They are made 
up of a close network of fine nerves which 
seem to be able to detect in advance the 
slightest vibration in the atmosphere, 
caused by the friction of air currents 
against solid objects. Experimenters have sealed up 
the eyes of bats with gum, and released them in a 
large room where many ropes were suspended from 
the ceiling. The bats flitted about with their cus¬ 
tomary bullet speed, without striking one of the 
obstacles. 

Because bats have wings they used to be classed 
with birds. But they are, of course, mammals, be¬ 
cause they bring forth their two or three young alive 
and suckle them. The young bat is at first very tiny, 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 






naked, and pink, but it clings vigorously to its mother’s 
breast as she darts through the air. When at rest, 
the mother bat folds her delicate wings around her 
young to keep them warm. 

Bats usually spend the day in caves, hollow trees, 
thick bushes, church towers, or old barns and deserted 



A close relative to the Noctule Bat is the Hairy-armed Bat here 
shown. It gets its name from a broad band of fine short hairs 
under the wing, running from the forearm to the wrist 


buildings. They do not alight on the ground if they 
can avoid it, for they crawl with great difficulty, and 
they cannot spring into the air from a flat surface, but 
must climb up a little distance in order to launch 
themselves on their flight. 

The Little Policeman with Leathery Wings 

There are altogether about 300 kinds of bats, dis¬ 
tributed all over the world, except in the very coldest 
regions. As a rule they are small, but the flying-foxes 
of the Malay region have a spread of wings sometimes 
measuring five feet. These and other large bats found 
in the tropics are fruit-eaters and do much damage to 
crops; but the northern bats feed on insects, and so 
are very valuable to 
man. Indeed, the bat 
may be looked upon as 
the night policeman of 
our crops and gardens, 
for it devours enor¬ 
mous quantities of 
harmful moths and 
flying beetles. 

In certain parts of 
the South huge bat 
roosts or shelters are 
built and maintained 
at public expense, and 
where this has been 
done mosquitoes are 
rapidly destroyed. 

Children, therefore, 
should be gentle with 
their tiny flying cous¬ 
ins who, in spite of 
their strange appear- 
ance and harsh 
squeaking voice, are 
friendly and easily 
tamed if carefully approached. 

Bats have always had an undeservedly bad reputa¬ 
tion, and many silly tales have been told about them, 
such as the superstition that they take delight in en¬ 
tangling themselves in women’s hair. There are, 


however, certain tropical vampire bats which settle 
on the backs of horses and cows or even on sleeping 
human beings, and suck their blood, sometimes so 
weakening their victims that they die. These greatly 
dreaded little creatures have such small gullets that 
nothing but liquid food can pass through. They are 
common in parts of Central and South America, but 
are never found in the United States. These blood¬ 
sucking bats get their name of vampire from the 
“vampires” of legend—ghosts which come out of their 
graves at night, according to the superstition, and suck 
the blood of human beings. The belief in such super¬ 
natural beings still exists in backward parts of Europe. 

The name of the order of bats is Chiroptera, from the Greek 
words meaning “hand-winged.” If you look closely at a 
bat’s wing, you will see that the bones correspond roughly 
to the fingers of your hand, the hook at the top representing 
the thumb. The species most frequently seen in the northern 
United States are the little brown bat (Vespertilio subulatus), 
and the red bat (Lasiurus borealis ). Scientific name of com¬ 
mon vampire, Desmodus rufus. 

B AVA'RIA, Germany. The fertile plateau and green- 
clad mountains of Bavaria, the most southern of the 
German states, reflect the spirit of a people far dif¬ 
ferent from the light-haired “efficient” Prussians of 
the low-lying sandy plains to the north. The Bava¬ 
rians are more largely dark haired, with easy-going, 
tolerant temper. They are instinctive lovers of music 
and color, and their country is the true home of 
German art. 

Careless of the rush of modern factory industry, 


the Bavarian countrysides have kept something of 
the warm picturesqueness of the Middle Ages. The 
peasants in the more remote valleys still wear quaint 
costumes, rich with embroidery and silver buttons. 
The herd-girls, in their dark full skirts and scarlet 


A BAVARIAN FOLK DANCE 



A traveler in Bavaria took this snapshot of one of the most popular of the Bavarian folk dances. It is some¬ 
what like the Virginia reel, except that it is danced by one man and two women instead of two couples. They 
dance separately at first, the man and the women alternately advancing toward one another and retreating. 
Later in the dance the women circle around the man several times, as they are doing in the picture. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see infor motion 

346 











In Picturesque Bavaria 


bodices with white sleeves, may still be seen guarding 
their flocks on the distant hills as their forebears did 
four and five centures ago. Even in the towns 
descendants of the famous gild craftsmen of former 
days still labor in their little shops, turning out the 
skilled handwork in wood and metals for which 
medieval Germany was celebrated the world over. 

Cut off by wooded mountains to the northeast and 
northwest, and by the towering snow peaks of the 
Alps to the south, Bavaria has until the past century 
run a separate course in spirit and politics from the 
rest of Germany. When their northern neighbors 
followed Luther in the Protestant Reformation, the 
Bavarians remained Roman Catholic. When Na¬ 
poleon overran Europe, Bavaria sided with the 
French. When Prussia and Austria fought in 1866, 
she helped Austria. Even after the formation of the 
German Empire in 1871, Bavaria kept her own army 
and postal system, her own laws and customs, and 
her own royal family, which continued to rule until 
the revolution of 1918. 

From the days of the Roman Empire, whose 
boundaries followed the rivers Danube and Main 
squarely through the middle of Bavaria, the Bavari¬ 
ans have been intimately associated with Italian 
civilization. A rich commerce flowed northward over 
the Alpine passes to the ancient cities of Augsburg, 
Regensburg (Ratisbon), and Nuremberg. Bavaria 
thus early became a center of wealth and learning. 
Out of these intimate associations, in which Bavaria 
formed the link between the Latins to the south and 
west and the Teutons and Slavs to the north and 
east, grew the cordial adaptable spirit found in 
present-day Bavaria. 

Today the pack mules, laden with the rich silks, 
tapestries, and spices of the East, which wound their 
way through the passes of the Alps, are replaced by 
iron rails and locomotives. But old Nuremberg is still 
the commercial and industrial center of south Ger¬ 
many. Munich, the capital of the state, as well as the 
literary and art center of Bavaria, presents a thor¬ 
oughly modern appearance with its broad streets and 
beautiful buildings (see Munich; Nuremberg). 

Everywhere beer-making, the ruling industry of 
Bavaria, is in evidence. In the cities brewery chim¬ 
neys mingle with tall church spires, and in the country 
the straight white roads, dotted with Catholic shrines, 
lead through rolling hills clad with graceful hop vines. 
In the Alpine foreland cattle-raising is the principal 
industry. There shingled wooden cottages of an Al¬ 
pine type prevail, which in the more agricultural lands 
towards the Danube give place to tiled farmhouses. 
Lack of coal is one of the chief handicaps of Bavarian 
manufactures. 

Amid the mountains of southern Bavaria lies the 
little village of Oberammergau, where every ten years 
the villagers produce the Passion Play of Christ's 
crucifixion. The peasants play all the 350 parts— 
Jesus, Mary, Pilate, Caiaphas, the Apostles—and the 
preparations are long and earnest. The drama takes 


BEAN | 

all day with a noon intermission, and is performed on 
12 days, to crowds that come from all over the world. 

Bavaria was organized as a duchy before the days 
of Charlemagne while Prussia was still inhabited by 
barbarous Slavs. Napoleon in reward for its aid con¬ 
ferred the title of king (in 1805) on the ancient ruling 
house of Wittelsbach, which continued to govern until 
deposed at the end of the World War. Bavaria re¬ 
mains today the largest and most populous state of the 
German Republic after Prussia. 

The German name for Bavaria is Bayern. Area, 
30,819 square miles; population, about 6,900,000. 
Bean. If you don’t “know beans” you have missed 
one of the most valuable of garden vegetables, for 
beans furnish more nutriment at a lower price than 
any other of our staple foods, even wheat. Many 
varieties of them are grown throughout the world, 
forming a large part of the food of the human family! 
They are so rich in protein that in a measure they 
can be used to replace meat in our diet. 

Bean plants are annuals, grown as low bushes or 
vines from seed. They have clusters of creamy 
butterfly-shaped flowers, which are followed by pods, 
usually from two to eight inches long, containing the 
seeds or beans. One recently developed variety has 
pods as long as a man’s arm. The beans in the pods 
vary in size and color, often being beautifully marked 
with contrasting hues, like the famous beans for 
which Jack the Giant Killer sold his mother’s cow, 
in the old nursery tale. The entire bean plant is 
sometimes used as stock food. The roots are valuable 
soil renovators. 

The best-known bean of the United States is the 
white navy bean of the famous “Boston-baked” type. 
It is one of the more than 150 varieties of the kidney 
bean the “haricot” of the French—the original 
stock of which is thought to have come from South 
America. This species also includes the many 
varieties of wax and string beans eaten green with 
the pods, or shelled and dried. 

The lima bean also came from South America. It 
has large flat beans in a broad pod that grows on 
either a bush or vine. The pod is not edible, but the 
seed is eaten both green and dried. Tepary beans and 
the small flat black frijoles are much used beans of 
Mexico and other Latin-American countries, where 
they rank next to corn as a staple food. They also 
grow in the southwestern United States. The cow- 
pea, also called the black-eye bean, is the chief 
forage and green manuring plant in the south of the 
United States, and the shelled seeds are eaten green 
or dried (see Cowpea). 

Soy beans are the common beans of China, Japan, 
and India, where they are an important item in the 
diet of the rice-eating Orientals. They are not eaten 
as a vegetable, but are prepared in a great variety of 
complex forms, such as a sort of cheese made by 
crushing, boiling, and curdling into cakes. In 
America the soy bean is grown as forage, as soil food, 
and for silage (see Soy Bean). 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this 

347 


work 






THE EARLY LIFE OF JACK’S BEAN-STALK 




That famous bean-stalk which shared with Jack the honor of disposing of the giant started in life in just the humble way shown in tois series 
of pictures. In the first the withered pod has opened and started little Mr. Bean on his career. The autumn rains wash the seeds into 

the earth crannies and bury them under the mold. 




With thp rnminp of sorine we see the process of germination. The two halves, or “cotyledons,” of the seed split open. The root starts 
dowii in 8ea“ch of food? ww!e toe emb^o leavesf which at this stage of their career form a little bud called a “plumule,” start up in 

search of a supply of sunshine. 






No matter how the seed lies, the root always persists in going downward and the leaves in climbing up to catch the sun rays. Botanists 
have tried, by fastening growing seeds to rotating discs, to make the leaves and the roots change their minds, but they never dol In the 
last two pictures the little plant is thoroughly established in business, and the leaves have opened out. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see information 


348 















European Beans 


The common bean of Europe is the broad bean, 
which has been used as food for both man and animal 
since the remotest times. Our scarlet runner is an 
ornamental climber, which in Europe is also grown 
as a string and shell bean. 

Beans are prepared for winter use in various ways. 
Enormous quantities are ripened, shelled, and dried. 
Dried beans are also cooked, seasoned ready for the 
table, and canned as baked beans. String beans are 
also canned. 

Beans are legumes of the family Fabaceae. Scientific 
name of the kidney bean, Phaseolus vulgaris; of lima bean, 
Phaseolus lanatus. 

Bear. Among the four-footed inhabitants of the 
wilderness there is none that is better known or more 
interesting to people of all ages than the bear, nor is 
there one that is so generally misunderstood, or about 
which so many things are said and believed that are 
not true. In common with many flesh-eaters, the 

bear has suffered in 
reputation from stories 
which greatly exag¬ 
gerate his ferocity, and 
ascribe to him many 
evil qualities he does 
not possess. 

The bear is naturally 
timid, good-natured, 
and inoffensive. In¬ 


BEA 


3 



stead of 
seeking man 
in order to 
devour him, 
the bear dis- 
plays the 
greatest as- 

. tuteness in 

How would one know that these were young bears , . , , 

even if one didn’t see them and somebody just nlS enortS tO 
said he had seen the bears climbing the trees? Q -irnid man 
The article tells. avoid man. 

But he is not 

a coward. He is fully conscious of his strength, 
and when occasion arises he never fails to defend 
himself. Like a true gentleman, the bear tries to 
avoid trouble, but when his peaceful efforts fail he 
fights savagely. 

Bear Characteristics and Habits 
In appearance the bear is a clumsy creature. The 
middle of his back is the highest point of his body. 
He has a short neck, round head, pointed muzzle, and 
small eyes. His legs are stout and he walks “planti¬ 
grade,” or flat-footed, like a man. The soles of his 
feet are bare. Each foot has five toes, armed with 



Here you see the comparative size of the 
foot of a Grizzly and a boy’s hand. 


long stout claws which are not retractile—that is, 
they cannot be drawn back into a sheath like those 
of a cat. His hair is long and shaggy and is shed 
annually. The tail is very short. The teeth clearly 
indicate that the bear is “omnivorous”—that is, that 
he eats almost every¬ 
thing. The canine or 
“dog” teeth are long 
and sharp for tear¬ 
ing flesh, while the 
molars are well 
adapted for grind¬ 
ing roots and oth¬ 
er vegetable foods. 

The bear walks with a shambling gait, lifting both 
feet on one side of his body at the same time. His 
clumsy movements when at case are very deceiving, 
for he can turn with surprising swiftness and deal 
terrific blows with his forepaws with the agility of 
a cat. In running he goes at a sort of gallop, and 
his speed is such that he can overtake the swiftest 
human runner in a few minutes. In attacking, the 
bear frequently, though not always, stands erect and 
uses his forepaws as well as his teeth. Bears are 
good swimmers, and most kinds climb trees while 
young. 

In the wild state most bears hibernate from two to 
six months during the winter, even in warm climates 
where food is plentiful the year around; but in cap¬ 
tivity they rarely do this even in a cold climate. 
When cold weather approaches the bear seeks 
a secluded spot and a suitable den for its 
winter quarters. Sometimes the base of a 
hollow tree is chosen, or a cavity under the 
roots of a “blow-down” or fallen tree; or the 
bear may scoop out a den for itself. It covers itself 
"with leaves, grass, or dirt, leaving only an air-hole 
for its breathing. The bear is not dormant during 
its period of hibernation, but it takes no food or 
drink (see Hibernation). 

Young bears, called cubs, are born in January, 
while the mother is hibernating. Two cubs at a 
birth seems to be the rule with bears, but there are 
exceptions. Baby bears are nearly hairless at birth 
and ridiculously small, considering the size of the 
parents. They are helpless for many months, and 
remain with their mother the first year and go into 
the den with her the second winter. 

Though classed as carnivores or flesh-eaters, most 
bears subsist largely on a vegetable diet. They eat 
grass, grain, roots, nuts, berries, fruit, grubs, insects, 
frogs, snakes, mice, snails, crabs, eggs, fish, birds, 
and any other kind of game they can capture or 
find in good condition. They do not eat carrion. 
Most bears are fond of ants, probably on account' of 
an acid which these insects secrete, and to obtain 
them the bears use their strong claws to tear apart 
decayed stumps and logs, and to dig up ant-hills. 
They are also passionately fond of honey, and will 
travel many miles to get it. 


■ontained in 


the Easy Reference Fact-Index 

349 


tf the end of this work 






BEAR 


Look Out for Mr. Grizzly! 


Different kinds of bears are widely distrib¬ 
uted throughout North America, Europe, and 
Asia, and some parts of northern Africa. Only one 
species is found in 
South America, and 
none in Australia. 

The bears of North 
America constitute 
four distinct and eas¬ 
ily recognized groups. 

Their common and 
scientific names are: 

Black bear ( Ursus 
americanus) ; Grizzly 
bear ( Ursus horribil- 
is) ; Alaskan brown 
bear ( Ursus gyas ); 

Polar bear ( Thalas - 
sarctos maritimus). 

The black bear was 
originally found in all 
parts of the North 
American continent, 
except in the extreme 
north, and it still ex¬ 
ists wherever there is 
extensive forest land 
sufficient to shelter it. 

Though persistently 
hunted for several 
hundred years, it is 
still found in the 
Adirondacks and in 
New England. In the 
fall when the coat of 
this bear is at its 
best, the fur is entirely 
black except for a 
brown patch on the muzzle and an occasional white 
spot on the breast. Its hearing and sense of smell 
are very keen and enable it to avoid its enemies. 
The least suspicious sound or odor is sufficient to 
start it from its lair, and it requires a skilful hunter 
to run it down or approach within rifle range. A 
large black bear may weigh 500 pounds or more, but 
the normal weight is much less. 

The cinnamon bear is a color variation of the black 
bear, both types being found in the same litter. For 
a long time after its discovery the cinnamon bear was 
believed to be a distinct species, and most of the early 
accounts described it as being equal to the grizzly in 
size and exceeding it in ferocity. But science dissi¬ 
pates all illusions and superstitions; and since the 
true position of the cinnamon bear has been estab¬ 
lished, it is regarded as the shy inoffensive animal 
that it really is. 

Five other forms or sub-species of the black bear 
are now recognized, four of which closely resemble the 
main type. They are found respectively in Florida, 
Louisiana, Labrador, and Queen Charlotte Island. 


The fifth, known as the glacier bear, is of a rare 
bluish-gray and is found in Alaska, in the vicinity of 
Mt. St. Elias. Like the cinnamon bear, the glacier 

bear was formerly 
thought to be a dis¬ 
tinct species, but a 
litter of young ones, 
in which both types, 
were represented, es¬ 
tablished the true 
relationship. 

The black bear is 
often seen in captiv¬ 
ity and is a favorite 
with young and old. 
Its habit of standing 
erect, its droll appear¬ 
ance, and its plaintive 
appeals for dainties, 
which are generally 
accompanied by a 
whine like that of a 
child, give it a human 
aspect. This is fur¬ 
ther heightened by 
the amusing antics of 
the cubs, which may 
be likened only to the 
romping and wrest¬ 
ling of boys. Bears 
have a keen sense of 
humor, as evidenced 
by their fondness for 
ducking one another 
in a pool. Dr. Horn- 
aday says bears are 
easily kept in captiv¬ 
ity, and if properly 
fed and not too closely confined they, are good- 
natured and contented. 

America’s Fiercest Animal 
The grizzly bear, or “silver-tip,” inhabits the west¬ 
ern part of North America from the Arctic Ocean to 
southern Mexico, and from the Rocky Mountains to 
the Pacific. There are several varieties. In size some 
about equal that of the black bear, but the largest 
attain a length of ten feet and a weight of almost 
1,500 pounds, and are capable of carrying off small 
horses and cattle. They vary in color from a light 
yellow to almost black. The tips of the hairs are 
lighter, giving them a grizzled appearance, whence 
come the names grizzly and silver-tip. 

The grizzly is the fiercest and most dangerous' 
American mammal. The Indians feared it and the 
warrior who overcame a large one was very properly 
regarded as a great brave. The grizzly possesses 
greater intelligence than the black bear, and when 
wounded or brought to bay is a dangerous antagonist. 
The coming of the white man with firearms marked 
the beginning of the end, and like other big game the 


THIS ALWAYS AMUSES THE CHILDREN 




One of the keepers is asking one of the Black bears in that wonderful collection 
of animal life, the New York Zoo, to stand on his hind legs for the amusement 
of the children. 


For any subject 


not found in its 

350 


alphabetical 


place 


see 


Index 






The Woodman and the Boy 


BEAR 




TALES THE WOODMAN TOLD 


THE $T©RV @r J®HR0MY BEAR 

ffiilKIgE there 


was a Woodman 
"1 who was Wondrous 

^ Wise and knew all 

f about bears and 
everything, be¬ 
cause he lived 
right out in the 
woods with them.. 

And once there 
was a Little Boy 
who liked bear 
stories very much; 

and since the Woodman liked the Little 
Boy, he told him all about bears, and 
this is the this is what he told him: 

Little Boy “Bears are funny,” said the Wood¬ 
man, “oh, terribly funny! But little bears are funnier. And bears are also 
very wise but they walk awfully funny. Did you ever see bears walk?” 
asked the Woodman. 

Little Boy said he hadn’t. 

“They make great big tracks like 
this,” said he, drawing with a piece 
of chalk. “See the tracks and the 
marks of their claws? That’s 
because they can’t draw in their 
claws like a cat; and another funny 
thing is that they step with both 
feet on the same side at the same 
time; that’s what makes them 
wobble so. 

“Now,” said the Woodman, ^ 

“I am going to tell you a story 
about a little bear named Johnny. 4 


Johnny stretched and 
said “Ho-hum!’ 


This is the 

Woodman, and 


^A bear has a wonderful 
nose for news, 
’specially szueet news— 

“Johnny Bear had been sleeping 
under a big tree and awoke when 
the sun came up. Johnny stretched 
and said ‘Ho-hum!’ just like that— 
‘Ho-hum!’ Then he sat up and 
rubbed his eyes and said, ‘I’m 
^^Started off hungry!’ Then he sniffed the air 
down hill— in all directions, and all of a sudden 
he began to smile, for he smelled 
a wonderfully sweet smell. You 
know a bear has a wonderful nose for news, especially sweet 
news; so he started off down hill did I tell you he slept on 
a hill? Well, Johnny was terribly hungry, and in a big 
hurry, so he started to run. But that’s one thing a bear 
can’t do; he can’t run down hill, because his hind legs are 
longer than his front ones, and the first thing Johnny Bear 
knew he was tumbling head over heels right down the hill! 

“But Johnny didn’t mind a bit; he just picked himself 


■plover 
f(( heels 


W'/ right 
F down hill! 


351 

































BEAR 


Johnny Bear’s Sleeping CoverT] 







He followed his nose 
for about a mile — 


“I don’t know,” 
said the Little Boy. 

“Well, I’ll tell you,” 
said the Woodman, 
“he smelled honey. Of 
course the honey was 
in a nest of bees, but 
that didn’t bother 
Johnny any. When he 
came to the tree where 
his nose told him the 
honey was, he just 
climbed up and poked it right into the bees’ nest.” 

“O-o-oh! didn’t he get stung?” asked the Little Boy. 

“Well, yes—a little,” said the op ^ 

Woodman. “But Johnny didn’t ^ # 

care about that for the honey was ^ 

so good, and he ate and ate and * °° 

didn’t stop eating until all the * 
honey was gone. Then he backed 
down the tree, rubbed his paws 
over his face to get off the honey, 
licked his paws, and walked off!” * M 

“But what happened to the bees?” 
asked the Little Boy. 

“They were still after him,” said 
the Woodman. “But they couldn’t 
sting him very much on account 
of his thick coat, and besides 
* he knew that after he swished 

around through the brush a little the 
bees would leave him. 

“Johnny Bear was feeling quite 
contented with such a good breakfast; 
so he hunted up a nice shady spot to 
go to sleep and curled 
himself up, putting his 
paw over his 
nose, even 


cP " 
if 2 <t» 

f<e 

<# % 

* 

** Z** * 

d?V to op * 

dp •» 




though it was a warm day, 
for bears always sleep with 
their noses in their paws.” 

“What for?” asked the 
Little Boy. 

“I don’t know,” said the 
Woodman, “unless it’s to 
keep the flies off. Well, 
Johnny hadn’t been sleeping 
very long before his sister 
and his mother came along 
and woke him up. Johnny 
was feeling quite playful by this time, so he 
and his sister started the funniest boxing 
match you ever saw. They’d tumble each 
other over, then wrestle awhile, and kick and 
paw each other, then make believe they 
were angry and bite each other. And 
so they played until they got 
hungry again, 
while Mother 


*Oo-oh! did’nt 
he get stung ? 


352 









| When Mother’s Strength Helps j §% 


BEAR 




and woke him up 

stone over; so they called Mother Bear, 
and she came and held up the stone while 
they ate the grubs all up.” 

“Ate them all up,” asked the 
Little Boy, “while Mama Bear held 
piy up the stone?” 

Spr “Yes,” said the Woodman, “I 
saw it with my own two eyes. I’ve 
seen mother bears do that more than 
Sir once. 

“When they were just ready to 
move on, they heard a crashing of 
i^_ branches and leaves, so they all 

stood up very 

g match quietly—yes, 

an ever see „ . „ „ A 

saw 

rig ht up 
on their 


His mother and sister came along 

Bear watched and kept an eye out for 
danger. 

■ “Pretty soon she said they’d better jHH 
be looking for dinner, so the little 
bears were all attention § 

and started sniff-sniffing 
around old logs and stones | ^ 

and things for—what do 
you suppose? Grubs! VA'SlG' 3f 
Now if there is anything JPl Vy 

a bear likes better than 
anything else, it’s honey 
or syrup, and next he likes 
the great big juicy white 
grubs that by and by are to turn into beetles. 
So they went sniffing around, and every once 
in a while—snap! they’d have a 
grub. But pretty soon Johnny 

^ jl < 0*7 came a hat stone, 
££0 0*? an< ^ Johnny just knew 
there were lots of grubs 
p$|] under that. Sister knew 

I: - /-VjX 2 ^ 7 ^ too, but they 

couldn’t turn the 


It was the funnie 


hind legs, wr 

because 

you know 

bears can ' 

all stand erect, even baby bears; bears can 

even walk that way, but not very well—and 

over by a big tree they saw old Mr. Bear 

carrying on at a great rate. First 

he’d stretch ’way up and claw 

the bark, and stand off and look 


Mother Bear came 
and held up the stone 


353 















[BEAR 


Telling Mother All about It | 



to see how high his 
scratches were.” 

“What did he do 
that for?” asked the 
Little Boy. 

“Well, you see,” 
said the Woodman, 

? “he saw by 

:|l some scratches suppose when he saw Mother Bear that 
on the tree evening he told her a big fish story about 
that there had the fish he caught.” 

been another The Woodman didn’t say any more, so 

the Little Boy asked, “Is 
that all about bears?” 

“Well, that’s all 
y* about bears today,” 
said the Woodman. 


then stand off and look 


He’d stretch way up and 
scratch the bark- 

big bear along the path 
and scratched the tree as t 
high as he could reach; 4|| 
for that’s the way a bear 
always does—to show^the. Mi 
next bear who comes along 
how big he is, I guess. 

Anyway, old Mr. Bear 
after trying two or three 
times made a scratch a little bit higher than 
the others. First he sat back and looked at 
it a bit, and then started off down ithe trail, 
looking for the other bear, growling to him¬ 
self at a great rate. 

“After that Johnny Bear went down to a 
nice stream where he knew there were some 
fish. He took his position on the bank, as 
Mother Bear had taught him, and waited 
until a fish came along when—flip! he put 
his paw under a fish and tossed it out on the 
bank, and then ate it. It was just a little 
fish, but Johnny was pretty proud of himself. 
The next one was a little bigger, and so 
Johnny fished until he got 
tired and full and sleepy, 
then he went home and I 


It was just a little fish, 
but Johnny was very 
proud of himself 


He told '•Mother Bear* a big fish story 


354 






















) The Polar Bear’s Warm Suit 




nm sm-pris^g^viftnes^over^ the ice^andTt^a^terrUile'fi^htVr 8 . °The e, ‘Sifver-Tij?’ G^izzly^at't^^right^s'^^named 1 because the 
tips of the hairs in his coat are light gray. Heavy as he looks, this bear can gallop over rough ground at great speed 


grizzly bear would be in serious danger of being 
exterminated were it not for the protection given in 
the Yellowstone and other national parks. 

The Alaskan brown bears are found only in Alaska. 
They attain the enormous weight of 1,500 pounds, 
and are not only the largest living bears, but the 
largest living carnivores which are found on land. 
Yet their existence was unknown prior to 1896. They 
are afraid of man and flee from his presence, but when 
wounded or suddenly surprised at close quarters they 
will fight furiously. They spend much of their 
time hunting for mice, ground 
squirrels, and marmots, which 
they dig out of their burrows. 

When the salmon come up 
I the rivers, these bears gorge 

i themselves on fish. In mid¬ 
summer and fall these huge 
carnivores present the curious 
| spectacle of grazing like cattle. 

The polar bear is appropri¬ 
ately dressed in white to 
I harmonize with its surround¬ 

ings. It is completely cov¬ 
ered, even to the soles of its 
I feet, with long thick fur. It 
i! is a powerful swimmer and 
even in midwinter is perfectly 
at home in the water. Only the female polar 
bear hibernates. Her winter den is a cavity under 
the ice and snow, and there she brings forth her 
young. Until they are quite grown the cubs remain 
with their mother, who cares for them, teaches them, 
and protects them from harm. Dr. Nelson says: 
“When a mother polar bear scents danger she jumps 
into the water and her cub holds fast to her tail while 
she tows it to safety. But when no danger seems to 
threaten she wants it to ‘paddle its own canoe,’ and 
boxes its ears or ducks its head under water if it insists 
on being too lazy to swim for itself.” 

The male polar prowls about on the ice during the 
[ long winter night, subsisting on fish, seals, walruses, 
and any other food he can find. When in dire need he 
does not hesitate to attack men, and many an Eskimo 

For any subject not found in 


has fallen a prey to his attacks. In summer, when food is 
plentiful, he never attacks man except in self-defense. 
Bears of Europe and Asia 

The brown bear of Europe ( Ursus arctos ) resembles 
the grizzly more than any other American bear. It 
is larger than the black bear and more dangerous to 
man, although by no means as blood-thirsty as is com¬ 
monly reported. It attacks man only when provoked 
or when suffering from extreme hunger. An account 
of this bear which tells how it attacked a camping 
party surrounded by a circle of fire, by first plunging 
into water and then rolling 
across the fire to extinguish 
it, makes a good story, but 
overstates the intelligence of 
this dull-witted creature. 

The strength of the brown 
bear is almost unbelievable. 
It has been known to kill a 
cow and carry it across a 
small stream in its fore paws, 
walking upright on its hind 
legs. Another authentic ac¬ 
count tells how it dragged a 
deer weighing 600 pounds 
from a pit and through the 
woods three-quarters of a 
mile. The range of the brown 
bear is from the Atlas Mountains in Africa across 
Europe and Siberia to Kamchatka. 

The Himalayan bear (Ursus torquatus) is found in 
Asia from Persia to Japan. It resembles the black 
bear in size, color, and habits. 

The Malayan, or sun bear (Ursus malayanus ), is 
smaller. It inhabits the Malayan peninsula and the 
larger East Indian islands. 

BEATTY (ba'te), Admiral Sir David (born 1871). 
During the last two years of the World War of 1914- 
18, the British Grand Fleet was under the com¬ 
mand of Admiral Sir David Beatty, who by his skilled 
leadership was largely responsible for defeating the 
German submarine campaign. 

Born of a good Irish family, he entered the British 
navy in 1884, becoming a commander in 1898, captain 

its alphabetical place see Index 



This is Mr. Brown Bear, who, although he lives in Europe, 
is very much like his American cousin, Mr. Grizzly. For 
strength, as the article tells you, he is one of the Samsons 
of his race. 


355 













in 1900, and rear admiral in 1910. In 1901 he was 
married to a daughter of Marshall Field of Chicago. 
He played a distinguished part in the World War from 
the beginning. In the battle of Jutland, May 31, 
1916, he commanded the battle cruiser squadron, and 
engaged the numerically superior enemy in spite of 
heavy losses until the arrival of the dreadnought squad¬ 
ron under Admiral Sir John It. Jellicoe. When the 
latter was retired to shore duty in November 1916, 
to become later First Sea Lord at the Admiralty, 
Admiral Beatty succeeded him. 

Beaver. Have you ever heard the saying, “as busy 
as a beaver”? Anyone who has ever had the good 
fortune to see a colony of these water animals at work 
has no difficulty in understanding its meaning, for 
they are among the most intelligent and industrious 
of animals, and the dams and houses which they con¬ 
struct are wonderful products of animal skill. 

The beaver belongs to the group of “gnawers” or 
rodents, and is the largest and heaviest of that family. 


feet in diameter and two or three feet in height, and 
the floor is carpeted with bark, grass, and wood chips. 
There are two entrances, both under water. One, 
called the beaver entrance, is often winding in its 
course as a protection against enemies. The other 
is straight and is used both for taking in the wood for 
winter food, and as a means of escape in case of in¬ 
vasion by a mink or other water enemy. Both these 
entrances open into a moat around the house, too deep 
to freeze solidly, so that the beavers are not likely to 
be shut in. 

Beavers as Engineers 

In order that they may easily pass back and forth 
under the winter’s ice, and that they may have room 
to store food, the beavers build dams to increase the 
water about the lodges. These dams are often of 
great size; indeed one is reported 1,530 feet long. The 
first step in dam-building is the selection of a suitable 
site, a narrow place in shallow water with firm bottom. 
Then work is begun of felling trees. Standing on 



This is Mrs. Beaver, but not all these are her children, because, just look, there are one, two. 
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them,—almost all of the same size! Beavers 
have only three or four babies at a time. Of course, she may have taken a half-dozen of them to 
raise. Beavers do that very thing when babies are left orphans by the death of their own mothers. 


A large beaver measures about two feet from the tip 
of his nose to the root of his tail, which adds about a 
foot more. The weight of such a specimen is about 
35 pounds, but large old specimens may weigh 75 
pounds. The tail is not the least curious feature of 
the beaver, for it is broad and flat with a horny cover¬ 
ing resembling scales. The front teeth are remark¬ 
ably large, and like the front teeth of the squirrels, 
rabbits, and other gnawing animals, are hard in front 
and softer behind, so that by use they become worn 
to chisel edges. The beaver’s hind feet are webbed 
for swimming and the flattened tail serves as a rudder 
and to splash the water for a warning signal. He is 
a splendid swimmer and diver. Frequently he re¬ 
mains under water for fully two minutes. 

Beavers are social animals. A family of several 
members usually lives in one house; and sometimes a 
large number of families collect together in a com¬ 
munity. They usually work at night and build their 
houses or lodges well concealed from haunts of man 
in small lakes or ponds made by damming up a forest 
brook. Their houses are oven-shaped and built of 
sticks, grass, and moss, woven together and plastered 
with mud, so strong as to protect the inhabitants from 
beasts of prey. The room inside may measure eight 


their hind legs the beavers gnaw round and round the 
trunk with their chisel-like teeth until the tree is 
ready to fall. Sometimes trees 18 inches in diameter 
are thus cut through by these sagacious animals. 

Some say that they always plan for the tree to fall 
toward the water; others declare that they work hap¬ 
hazard. After the tree is down the beavers set to 
work lopping off branches and cutting the trunk into 
lengths which they can drag into the water. The 
short logs, dragged or floated to the desired spot, are 
sunk parallel with the current, and if the water is deep 
they are kept down by means of stones, sod, and mud 
loaded on by the beavers. Mud and stones and 
heavier tiffibers are carried in their forepaws and 
small timber between their teeth. There is no super¬ 
intendence in their work, but each beaver does what 
seems to him best. The result is that the dam is 
usually a tangled heap, but it serves its purpose. In 
old dams willow and poplar logs have usually sprouted 
and have sometimes given rise to considerable trees. 

The beaver feeds mainly on the bark of trees (wil¬ 
low, poplar, birch, etc.), and on roots, buds, berries, 
and leaves. A store of good-sized green logs is always 
sunk in the water at the doors of their houses for 
winter feeding. When the trees near the water are 


For any subject 


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its alphabetical 

356 


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The Purpose of the Dam 


beaver] 



BEAVER POND 


Secondary 






MAIN DAM 


Direction 
of Stpeai 




Birch Bougha 
Stored fo P 
the Winter 










va*. 





used up and the land is too uneven for rolling, log- 
slides and canals are cut in the banks and bottom to 
carry down the timbers. These channels may be 
hundreds of feet long and about a yard in width and 
depth. One of the 
chief uses of the bea¬ 
vers’ dam is to insure 
sufficient water to 
float these logs. 

The soft thick 
gray under-fur of 
the beaver has long 
been highly valued 
by man, and during 
the 17th and 18th 
centuries beaver 
skins held first place 
in the world’s fur 
trade. At that time, 
before the invention 
of the modern silk 
hats, men’s hats 
were made from bea¬ 
ver skins and hence 
the word “beaver” often meant “hat.” So great 
was the demand for beaver fur that in the western 
part of Canada and the United States beaver skins 
at times passed as currency. 


Formerly this animal was distributed through the 
wooded part of the Northern Hemisphere, but it has 
been hunted until it is almost exterminated in settled 
portions. In the United States it is scarcely found 

east of the Missis¬ 
sippi. Occasional 
colonies are known, 
however, in Maine, 
Virginia, and a few 
other places. 

Rigid protection 
is afforded in most 
American states and 
in eastern Canada, 
and a plea has been 
presented for a game 
and fur preserve in 
the Canadian north- 
west. In Itasca 
Park, in Minnesota, 
the beaver has in 
recent years multi¬ 
plied rapidly under 
protection. 

Friends of the beaver have encountered bitter oppo¬ 
sition because of the damage it sometimes causes by 
flooding tracts of valuable timber. Its good deeds, 
however, outweigh the bad. By building a series of 


HOW MR. BEAVER CHOPS DOWN TREES 


Beavers cut down trees by gnawing through them with their sharp front teeth at 
the distance above the ground they can reach when standing upright. The tree 
is generally gnawed pretty equally all around, as you can see from these two stumps. 
The wood is usually cut away in very large chips. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 

357 


at the end of t hit 


work 


















BEAVER 


BECKET~| 


MR. BEAVER’S TIME-LOCK TO KEEP OUT THE BURGLARS 



Winter is the time when there are most burglars abroad in Beaverville, because then four-legged creatures of prey are most hungry and 
desperate. But Mr. Beaver’s people ages ago discovered a way of putting a time-lock on all their doors so that no prowling wolves or wild 
cats, or other marauders can break in. He simply plasters his house thickly over with mud and lets it freeze. On the left is a picture of 

an unplastered and on the right a plastered lodge. 


dams in mountainous districts, the beavers form ponds 
which hold the waters of the melting snows and give 
them out gradually during the summer to the arid 
plains. Thus they help to irrigate the land. More¬ 
over their great economic value as a source of fur and 
their interesting habits should alone be a sufficient 
argument in favor of protecting them. 

Scientific name of North American beaver, Castor cana¬ 
densis. Other species were formerly common in England, 
France, Germany, and elsewhere, but are now practically 
unknown except in some parts of Scandinavia, Germany, 
and Austria, and in Siberia. 

JJECK'ET, Thomas, Archbishop op Canterbury 
(1118-1170). In the majestic cathedral of Canter¬ 
bury, England, is a chapel where once stood the shrine 
of the murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket. The 
shrine is no longer there, but the steps which led up 
to it still stand, worn into hollows by the knees of 
countless pilgrims. For three centuries this was one 
of the most sacred spots in Christendom, and streams 
of religious pilgrims constantly thronged the road from 
London to Canterbury, jogging along at the leisurely 
pace which we call a “canter,” and beguiling the time 
with such pleasant stories as Chaucer has preserved 
for us in his ‘Canterbury Tales’. 

The saint at whose shrine they came to worship was 
a London merchant’s son, who had first risen to be 
chancellor, chief minister, and bosom friend of King 
Henry II. Thomas was 15 years older than his royal 
master, but had endeared himself by his love of fun 
and sport no less than by his sagacity in matters of 
state. The tall dark handsome Thomas, who loved 
splendid clothes and lavish living, must have been a 
striking contrast to the freckled red-haired sturdy 
king; but the two became inseparable, working and 
hunting and romping together like two schoolboys. 

But this friendship was soon to turn to the bitterest 
enmity . Wishing to bring the church under the power 
of the state, Henry appointed his boon companion to 
the highest church office in England, that of Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury. Thomas stoutly protested, for 


he had been the pupil of the former Archbishop, and 
he knew that in that office he would be forced to resist 
the king’s attempts to weaken the church’s power. 

But Henry blindly persisted, and Thomas straight¬ 
way, from the gayest of the gay, became a devout and 
jealous defender of the privileges of the church. The 
clash was not long in coming. The burning question 
of the time was whether churchmen should be subject 
To tlie king and his courts, or only to the Pope and the 
ecclesiastical courts. Unfortunately this “benefit of 
clergy,” as it was called, extended not only to 
priests but to everyone who had ever received the 
“tonsure”; it thus permitted many persons who were 
practically laymen to escape due punishment for their 
misdeeds, for the church law forbade the death penalty. 

Becket boldly stood out against Henry when he 
tried to lessen the independence of the clergy, and a 
furious quarrel began. One stormy night Becket fled 
in disguise to the court of Henry’s enemy, the King of 
France. Henry seized Becket’s revenues and exiled 
his relatives, but after several years a peace was 
patched up and Becket was allowed to return to 
England. His first act was to excommunicate those 
who had illegally, as he believed, executed the 
king’s commands in his absence. This fresh act of 
defiance stung the quick-tempered monarch to fury. 

“My subjects are sluggards, men of no spirit,” he 
cried. “They keep no faith with their lord; they 
allow me to be made the laughing-stock of a low-born 
clerk!” 

So, four of the king’s knights, hearing these words, 
took passage hastily across the Channel—for the king 
was in Normandy—proceeded to Canterbury, and 
slew the archbishop with their swords on the altar- 
steps of his own cathedral. 

This savage deed shocked all the Christian world. 
Henry was forced by the Pope to do bitter penance, 
and the dead archbishop was regarded as a martyr. 
The Pope declared him a saint, and his shrine re¬ 
mained the most hallowed spot in England until the 
Reformation, when it was destroyed by Henry VIII. 


For any subject 


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358 


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MRS. BUMBLE TALKS OF 
HER FAMILY 


F YOU listen real close you can hear Mrs. Bumble- 
Bee in the picture over the page talking as she 
works. She is saying something like this: 

“Far be it from me to boast, but really, we 
Bumble-Bees and Honey-Bees and our cousins the Wasps 
are one of the cleverest and most distinguished families of the 
insect world. Everybody knows about the Honey-Bee and 
its remarkable work, but my branch of the family isn’t so 
well known. Of course, the Bumble-Bees don’t do as much 
business as the Honey-Bees, but they are important pollen 
carriers for plants that the Honey-Bees can’t serve because 
their tongues are too short to reach the nectar. Our services 
are particularly valuable to growers of red clover. By the 
way, did you ever hear the conundrum: “Why does red 
clover grow thickest where there are cats? ” The great Charles 
Darwin first pointed out that this is true because the cats 
kill the field-mice, which would otherwise destroy the homes 
and nests of the Bumble-Bees. 

“Just above the Honey-Bee and to your left, the Leaf- 
Cutter Bee is cutting out a rose leaf for one of her honey 
jars. She uses her mandibles much as you use the scissors 
in paper cutting, holding the leaf with her six legs, three on 
each side. She bites toward herself so that the piece cut off 
remains in the grip of her legs. When it is about to fall off 
she flies with a triumphant buzz straight as an arrow to the 
mouth of a little tunnel she has prepared in a decaying branch 
of some tree. With these leaves she makes little honey jars 
in the tunnel, fills them with honey and pollen, lays an egg 
in each, and then puts on the cover. When an egg hatches, 
there is the jar of honey all ready for the baby, and he’s 
right in the jar! 

“The nest of the Wasp is quite different but no less remark¬ 
able. It is hidden underground, usually in some wayside 
bank. All the Wasps but the Queen die off in the Fall and 
the Queen Wasp starts a new colony. Finding a hole in a 
bank—preferably the deserted burrow of a field-mouse— 
she cleans it out, then makes a wood pulp from the fibers 
she gnaws from weathered wood and forms three cup-shaped 
cells at the end of a pillar of this pulp hanging from the roof, 
lays an egg in each, and then roofs all of them over. Then 
she adds more cells. While the first eggs have been hatching 
into tiny hungry grubs, she has gone on building more cells, 
and what with feeding the grubs as they come along and 
building more cells, she is kept pretty busy, I can tell you! 
As soon as the young Wasps are strong enough, though, they 
take over the nest-building and the feeding, and the Queen 
devotes all her time to laying eggs. 

















THE BUSY BEES AND THEIR COUSINS 



Lovely morning, isn’t it? And how the bees and their cousins the wasps are enjoying it! They’ve been up since daybreak, and 
it’s going to be another busy day with them. Down in the right-hand corner the Honey-Bee is working away on a head of white 
clover. The Leaf Cutter is cutting out a rose leaf. Above her is a Green Bee going somewhere in a great hurry. And the Bumble¬ 
bees are reaching out their long tongues, as usual, into the red clover blossoms. In the air on the left are two Bumblebee workers. 
The society name of the one in the striped suit is Bombus Philadelphicus. The one in the brown suit is better known to most people 
as the Ground Bumblebee, though scientists call it Bombus Ternarius. The one on the clover head with her back toward you is a 
Philadelphicus Queen. Below her, on the left, is a Ground Bumblebee Queen, and coming toward her in the yellow suit you recog¬ 
nize another Philadelphicus worker. Above and to the right of the Green Bee is a Yellow jacket looking for ■a meal, and just above 
her are two solitary or Thread-Waisted Wasps. The gaily painted fellow with the spidery legs is the Golden Digger. 



















St. Peter’s and the Hive 


BEE 


"DEE. As an architect, 
the bee—especially 
the 


honey-bee—is not 
surpassed by any 
member of the animal 
kingdom except man. 

The structure of a 
honeycomb is perfection 
in the way of strength and 
space for holding fluid con¬ 
tents. Maurice Maeter¬ 
linck, the renowned Belgian 
poet, whose ‘The Life of 
the Bee’ is one of the most 
interesting books in litera¬ 
ture, thus describes the 
inside as it would look to us 
if we could see it through 
the eyes of the bee: 

“From the height of a dome 
more colossal than that of 
Saint Peter’s at Rome, waxen 
walls descend to the ground, 
gigantic and manifold, vertical 
and parallel geometric con¬ 
structions, to which, for 
relative precision, audacity, 
and vastness, no human struc¬ 
ture is comparable. Each of 
these walls contains thousands of cells that are 
stored with provisions to feed the whole people for 
several weeks. In the 


JN all the wonder-hook of nature there is no story more 
amazing, more fascinating, more instructive, than the 
life-history of the bee. Wise men have been studying this 
mysterious little insect for centuries, but we still have 
much to learn about it. The skill, the ingenuity, the devo¬ 
tion of the bee are marvels that astonish us the more, the 
better we come to know them. 


In this highly magnified view of a bee you see how the 
sensitive feelers grow out of the middle of the face. 
Beneath the head afe the delicate mouth parts making 
up the proboscis, which is usually folded back beneath 
the head. In the center of the proboscis is the slender 
flexible grooved tongue with which the bee gathers 
nectar. 


center there stands the 
royal domain of the 
brood-cells, set apart for 
the queen and her atten¬ 
dants—about 10,000 cells 
wherein the eggs repose, 
15,000 or 16,000 cham¬ 
bers tenanted by larvae, 
40,000 dwellings in¬ 
habited by white nymphs 
to whom thousands of 
nurses minister. And 
finally, in the holy of 
holies of these parts, are 
the three, four, six, or 
twelve sealed palaces, 
vast in size compared 
with the others, where 
the adolescent princesses 
lie, who await their hour, 
wrapped in a kind of 
shroud, all of them 
motionless and pale, and 
fed in the darkness.” 

Wonderful structures 


A QUEEN AND HER ATTENDANTS 


like this can of course be 
made only by highly 
developed communities, 
such as are formed by 
the honey-bees. Honey¬ 
bees and bumblebees are 
called the social bees, 
because they live all 
their lives in great colonies 
containing sometimes in the 
case of honey-bees as many 
as 50,000 individuals. All 
the other families of bees, 
which nest by themselves, 
are called solitary bees. Each 
mother of these species pro¬ 
vides a nest for her young, 
which no longer live together 
when they have grown to 
adults. 

The honey-bees which we 
see flitting from flower to 
flower in garden and meadow 
have the most complicated 
social organization of all the 
animals, with the possible 
exception of the ants. They 
live in a republic where the 
citizens do all the governing 
without voting, where the many kings are powerless, 
and the one much cherished queen works as hard as 
any of her subjects,-and 


A queen and her attendants are just taking possession of a row of 
cells in a new hive. The queen is preparing to lay an egg in one 
of the cells, while the members of her escort encircle her, prepared 
to feed her or assist her in every way 

Fact-Index 


longer. Honey-bees are 
perfect socialists; they 
labor without competi¬ 
tion or personal reward, 
and they have everything 
in common. They are 
divided into castes, as 
workers, queens, and 
drones, but these castes 
exist for the benefit of all, 
not for their own private 
advantage. 

Where the Females 
Do the Work 

The worker honey-bee 
is a female specially un¬ 
developed and specially 
changed physically to 
carry on the labors of 
the colony. Her brain 
is much larger than that 
of the queen’s or the 
drone’s. She has combs 
on her hind legs to 
collect the pollen from 













flowers, and baskets to store it in. She has a system 
of chemical laboratories within herself, in one of which 
she changes the nectar of the flowers to honey. In 
another she produces food for queens, and in another 
she changes honey 
into wax. The 
duties of the 
worker bee are 
many. When she 
first matures she 
has to feed the little 
bee grubs or larvae , 
and keep the hive 
clean and ventilate 
it by fanning it 
with her wings. 

Later she learns 
how to take wax 
and build it into a 
honeycomb—or to 
hang up claw in 
claw with her sisters and gorge with honey in order to 
give forth little scales of wax from the glands on the 
lower side of her abdomen. She 
gathers nectar from the flowers, 
changes it to honey, and then stores 
it in the honeycomb. She gathers 
pollen, bringing it home in her pollen 
basket and then scraping it off into a 
cell, where she tamps it down with her 
head to make it into solid “bee-bread” 
to be fed to young bees. If the 
colony is attacked she must join in 
the battle to defend it. She may 
have to help exile her 
drone brothers when 
the time comes to get 
rid of them; or she 
may be waiting-maid 
to the queen, feeding 
and caring for her 
tenderly and produc¬ 
ing from her own 
glands the rich food 
necessary to the royal 
mother. She may 
have to gather bee- 
glue from leaf buds 
to calk the crevices of 
the hive, or she may 
have to hunt a suitable 
new place for housing 
a swarm that is soon 
to come out. 

Whatever her 
duties, she works with all her might and without any 
consideration for herself. She will starve herself to 
feed the queen; she will fight any enemy with the 
utmost recklessness; she will work at bringing in food 
until her frayed wings can no longer carry her; and 


at the end of her short and laborious life she falls by 
the wayside to die, neither expecting nor desiring 
any help from her sisters. There is no gratitude or 
pensioning in the bee colony; death and oblivion is 

the fate of the 
most ardent 
workers when they 
fail. The individ¬ 
ual is nothing; the 
community is 
everything. 

The worker is 
hatched as a little 
whitish grub from 
a fertilized egg 
placed by the queen 
in a small cell of 
the honeycomb. 
Worker For six days after 
she hatches she is 
fed by the bee 
nurses. Then her cell is capped, and she eats the food 
provided and makes a delicate silken cocoon for her¬ 
self and changes to a pupa. Twenty- 
one days from the time the egg was 
laid the worker bee comes forth, ready 
to begin her labors. 

The queen comes from an egg that 
would ordinarily develop into a worker. 
The workers start large cells at the 
edges or depressions of the comb, and 
deposit an egg in each. As soon as an 
egg hatches, they feed the larva on 
“royal jelly,” a very rich food which 
they produce. This 
food has a wonderful 
effect upon the young 
larva in many ways; 
for, 16 days after the 
egg is laid, the royal 
grub has matured and 
comes forth a queen 
bee, larger than a 
worker and with a 
long graceful body. 
The workers anxiously 
attend to her every 
want. Her first act 
after she comes out of 
the cell is to run over 
the comb and sting 
to death any other 
queen or tear down 
the cell of any grub 
“princess” that she 
can find. If two queens mature at the same time 
they battle until one is killed, fighting with a royal 
weapon—a sting curved like a scimitar—which the 
queen never uses upon anything or anybody except 
her rivals. 


A worker just returned from “mar¬ 
keting” in the fields, with the 
pollen basket on the hind leg as 
full as it can be. 


Bumblebees keep their honey, not in little wax cells as the honey-be 
does, but in round cells clustered together in the disorderly way you se 
here. These honey pots are built in the abandoned homes of field-mic 
or in any other rude shelter on the ground. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

360 


place 


see information 









arvelous Facto 
- Worker Bee’s 


Pollen Basket 


Stores the honey away in the comb 


young 


ow the' bee 
manufactures^ 
r%wwax 


Manyfacfure^wax^in it’s own boSyfahcl builds’cdls^Por honey and theSyoung be' 


Twelve days later, the 
bees come forth 


"Feeds the larvae for five days, 
after which they refuse to eat 


The "■^cells 
are now sealed up 


young 


Ceng^ |e n|F|»p|e d 

to develops queen — Queen Cells 


Worker wbees 
hatching— 


Worker^*' Bee 


Here you have the life of the bee in pictures. The pictures from 1 to S show you the gathering, manufacturing, and storing of 
honey and bee-bread, the making of wax, and the building of the comb. Section 6 is a picture-biography of the bee, from the 
time it begins as a tiny white egg until it comes out all dressed up in its new wings. At the bottom are views in different parts 
of the hive, with a picture of the wonderful insect that does all these marvelous things. 

But the picture you should examine most carefully is the one in the middle at the top. This shows the mechanism with which 
a bee performs all its amazing tasks. The bee’s stomach (B) is a chemical laboratory in which is concealed a very mysterious 
power. After the nectar from the flowers has been turned into honey, the bee swallows it, and it passes into the honey sac. A 
human chemist couldn’t turn honey into wax if he worked for a year, but a bee’s stomach does this work easily and rapidly while 
the bee, after it has swallowed all the honey it can hold, hangs by its tiny feet to the roof of the hive. The wax then comes out 
through the wax scales on the under side of its abdomen, and the bee scrapes it off with its hind feet, as you see in the circular 

picture in the center. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t ht s it) o T h 

361 




































[ 


BEE 



After a time, on some sunny day, the queen will 
fly from the hive seeking her mate. After mating she 
returns alone to the hive, capable of laying fertilized 
or unfertilized eggs at will. The fertilized eggs 
develop into workers and 
queens, the unfertilized 
into drones. She soon 
commences her great work 
of egg-laying, thrusting 
her abdomen into cell after 
cell and leaving an egg 
glued at the bottom of 
each. When the honey 
season is at its height, she 
sometimes lays six eggs a 
minute, or 3,000 in a day 
—twice her own weight. 

When the honey harvest 
runs low she lays fewer 
eggs; whether this is the 
result of her own wonderful instinct or whether it is 
in response to the food given her by the workers, no 
one knows. The queen may live five years or longer, 
while the worker, in the busy season, may 
wear herself out in three weeks. 

The Life of the Drones 

The drone or male bee has the least 
fortunate lot of all the bee citizens. In 
order that one drone may fulfill his destiny 
of mating with the queen, many are born 
only to be slain when the food supply runs 
low. The luckless drone is denied a share 
in all activities in the community. He is 
a clumsy broad blunt-ended bee, fitted for 
a life of idleness. He has no pollen baskets 
on his legs, no wax glands or honey stomach 
in his body; worst of all he has no sting 
to protect himself, and his tongue is not 
long enough to reach nectar in the flowers. 

But his wings are large and strong, to 
carry him miles in search of a queen; he 
has very large eyes—with 26,000 facets— 
and his antennae are fitted with smelling 
glands so that he has more than 37,000 
tiny nostrils wherewith it is said he detects 
the fragrance of his mistress’ royal person. 

The drone is hatched from an unfertilized 
egg laid in a cell larger than that of the 
worker. He is at first fed on rich food of 
pollen and honey. Twenty-four days from 
the laying of the egg he cuts a circular lid 
in the cap which the workers have made 
over his cell and crawls out, to move about 
on the comb and eat his fill of honey. After 
about two weeks he begins making flights 
hunting for a queen; but when he finds her his 
happiness is brief, for he dies immediately after mat¬ 
ing. If he finds no queen consort, his lot must puzzle 
him; for his sister workers, so kind to him always 
before, on a day when the food supply is limited, 


hunt and harry him fiercely, driving him outside to 
perish. 

How Bee Colonies Spread 

Bee colonies spread by swarming. A young queen 
is reared early in the 
season. Usually before 
she emerges from her cell, 
the old queen, followed by 
a large number of workers, 
departs for another abode, 
which, unless controlled by 
man, is some place selected 
by a worker scout. Those 
left behind are mainly 
young workers. 

The products of the 
honey-bee are honey and 
beeswax, the honey being 
marketed either in the 
comb or extracted and 
bottled. The beeswax remains when the honey is 
extracted from the comb. Honey is the most health¬ 
ful of sweets and before the 17th century was the only 
generally used substance for sweetening 
food. Bee-keeping is a profitable business; 
a strong colony sometimes produces in one 
season 500 pounds more honey than it uses. 
However, it is a business that requires train¬ 
ing, skill, and constant watchfulness, in part 
because bees are subject to serious diseases. 
Owners of orchards realize the value of bees 
in carrying the pollen of fruit blossoms and 
find it profitable to keep bees for that pur¬ 
pose, entirely apart from the value of 
their honey. 

In favorable seasons bees do not go more 
than two miles from the hive in searching 
for nectar. Basswood, white clover, in the 
North, and sage and orange blossoms in the 
South and West, yield the best quality of 
honey; buckwheat honey is dark and brings 
a low price. 

There are no honey-bees native to Amer¬ 
ica north of Mexico. Our wild honey¬ 
bees are colonies that have escaped from 
apiaries (places where bees are kept) and 
have found homes for themselves in hollow 
trees. The first bees brought over were 
the German or black bees. The Italian 
bees, which are more gentle and have longer 
tongues, have become universal favorites. 
Cyprian bees, Syrians, Egyptians, and 
Carniolans are races that have been 
introduced here and have found favor with 
a few. 

The bumblebees are also social, but they have not 
reached the efficiency of the honey-bee. However, 
they are very important as pollen carriers for thou¬ 
sands of plants, because they have long tongues and 
so are able to take nectar from deep flowers which 


A PEEP INTO THE NEST OF A MASON BEE 



The cell or nest of the Mason Bee is made of clay. In it the 
mother bee lays her egg which hatches into the larva shown 
here. 


A SWARM 



Somewhere in the cen¬ 
ter of this living mass 
of bees is an old queen, 
driven from the hive by 
jealousy. Around her, 
hanging to each other 
by their claws, are her 
faithful workers. 


For any subject not found in its 


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362 









^Babies in Bread and Honey 



BEE 


] 



the honey-bee cannot reach. This fact has proven 
very important to growers of red clover, for only the 
bumblebee can reach the nectar and thus carry the 
pollen for this important plant. The sight of a bum¬ 
blebee should warm the heart of every lover of 
flowers, and bumblebees should be protected by law. 

In early spring we often see a great bumblebee 
queen or mother flying low over the freshening 
meadows, hunting for the deserted nest of a field mouse 
or some other suitable cavity for a home. Finding 
a cozy place, she toils early and late gathering 
pollen and nectar from all flowers in bloom. This 
she mixes into an irregular mass of solid “bee- 
bread,” upon which she lays a few eggs, 
gradually adding to the pollen mass until the 
first brood is hatched. 

The little bee grub as soon as it is 
hatched, burrows into the bee- 
bread, making a little cave for 
itself as it eats. After it is 
fully grown it spins a silken 
cocoon about itself, and 
later comes out a worker 
bumblebee. She and her 
sisters at once set about 
gathering pollen and 
nectar, thus relieving 
the queen mother 
from the work of 
providing food, 
so that she 
can give all 
her energies 
to the 
1 


THE 


CARPEN 


TER 


duty of laying eggs. These daughters tend the 
growing family with the most devoted care, and 
later strengthen the silken cocoon cradles with wax, 
making them into cells in which they store honey. 
Late in the season a few queens are developed from 
the eggs laid by the queen, and a few drones to be 
mates for the queens. 


The queens are the only members of the whole 
colony of hundreds of workers and drones that are 
strong enough to stand the cold of winter. Thus each 
bumblebee colony lasts only for one season, while the 
honey-bees pass the winter in a semi-dormant state. 

The hairy body of the bumblebee is of great use in 
brushing and holding the pollen when she is working 
on flowers. After she is well powdered she alights on 
some leaf, and with the most strenuous and comical 
efforts combs the pollen 
out of her fur with special 
combs on her legs, and packs 
it in her pullen baskets on 
her hind legs. There are 
many species of bumble¬ 
bees, some large and other 
small; but whatever their 
size they are all beneficent 
friends of the flowers. 
“Trades” among the Bee 
People 

Among the most com¬ 
mon of the solitary bees are 
the carpenters, the leaf- 
cutters, and the miners. 
The mother carpenter bee 
bores a tunnel in soft dead 
wood by cutting out the 
chips with her jaws. The 
tunnel leads straight in for 
a short distance and then 
downward, and it is just 
large enough for her to 
move in comfortably. After 
the tunnel is completed she 
gathers pollen and nectar 
from flowers, and mixes 
them into a ball. Then 
she lays an egg upon this 
pollen mass. Next she 
gathers some of the chips 
cut out in making the tun¬ 
nel and glues them together 
with saliva, making a little 
partition above the pollen 
mass. This acts as a floor 
for the next cell, in which 
she places another pollen 
ball and another egg. She 
thus makes several cells, in 
each of which a young bee 
hatches from the egg and 
develops to maturity upon 
the “bee-bread” she has provided. When they are 
fully grown each young bee tears down the partition 
above him, and they all come out into the. world in 
single file, the youngest first. 

Not all carpenter bees bore into solid wood, for 
many species bore out the pith in the dead twigs of 
sumac, elder, raspberry, and other bushes. Some 


BEE’S 

APARTMENT 
The many-storied 
apartment houses, 
which the Carpenter 
bees dig in the trunks 
and branches of trees, 
would look like this if 
you cut the wood away. 
On the top floor the mother 
bee is preparing a mass of 
bee-bread and honey. In this 
ready-to-eat loaf she lays her 
egg, and the loaf serves both as 
a cradle and a pantry for her infant 
when it hatches. On the floor below 
is an egg, laid, perhaps, the day before, 
and protected by a partition of chewed- 
up wood pulp as firm as plaster. Below 
that a grub has hatched out and is eat¬ 
ing its bread and honey. On the two lower 
floors the young bees have reached the 
chrysalis or “sleeping” stage, during which 
their legs and wings develop. They will soon be 
ready to come out, but will have to wait until their 
youngest sister on the top floor matures. Then each 
tenant will bite a hole in her own ceiling and all will 
march out at once through the roof, and the one that 
hatched from the first egg laid is always the last one to 
leave the nest. 


the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 


363 


a t 


the end of this 


work 


contained in 








BEE 



BEECH 





carpenter bees are leaf-cutters also, lining their nests 
with pieces cut out of leaves, especially rose leaves, 
and making the partition above the cell with circular 
pieces cut from the same leaf. Leaf-cutter bees are 
very clever in sav¬ 
ing themselves the 
trouble of boring 
out a nest, and 
often use crevices 
between the 
shingles or even 
the holes in awn¬ 
ing rods. Some 
especially dainty 
species line their 
nests with pieces 
cut from the petals 
of pansies and 
other flowers. 

These carpenter 
and leaf-cutter 
bees vary in size 
from that of a 
small bumblebee 
to a tiny creature 
scarcely a quarter 
of an inch in length. 

The miners bore 
their tunnels into 
the ground instead of into wood, and make tiny cells 
branching off the main tunnel to receive the eggs. 
The walls of the cells are glazed so that they look like 
the inside of an earthen jug. In each cell is stored 
pollen and nectar 


Perhaps you have noticed the extraordinary skill of many insects in whirling and 
darting and swooping through the air. How they steer themselves so deftly in 
their sudden turns is still a mystery to science. Here we see (B) the typical 
course of a bee approaching a blossom, and (A) the twisting path of the drone fly. 
When the bee has taken on its load of pollen and honey, however, it returns to 
the hive in a path so straight that we use the expression “bee-line” for the most 

direct route possible. 


mining bees do a very important work in carrying 
pollen from flower to flower in the early spring, thus 
providing for their reproduction. Among the solitary 
bees some called inquilines are loafers and sponge 

their living in the 
nests of other bees, 
just as the cow- 
bird does in the 
nests of other birds. 
But no creature 
can become a para¬ 
site and get off 
without punish¬ 
ment. These lazy 
bees have degener¬ 
ated in form and 
have lost all power 
to live indepen¬ 
dently. 

Bees constitute the 
superfamily Apoidae 
of the order Hymen- 
optera, which includes 
the ants and wasps. 
About 1,500 species 
are recognized. The 
hive bees constitute 
the family Apidae; 
scientific name of 
common honey-bee, 


paste; then an egg is 
laid and the cell closed 
until the pupa is 
grown up and pushes 
out. While each 
mother miner digs her 
own nest, many of 
them may live as neigh¬ 
bors in villages. Some¬ 
times a square rod of 
ground will include 
thousands of burrows. 
Some of the miners 
are as large as honey¬ 
bees, but one species 
of miner is the small¬ 
est of all bees—less 
than a quarter of an 
inch in length. These 
tiniest of bees usually 
mine in the face of 
cliffs or sandbanks, 
which look as if they 
had received a charge 
from a shotgun. 

The carpenter and 


Apis mellifica. Bum¬ 
blebees belong to the family Bombidae. The bee has four 
wings, the hind pair the smaller; its mouth parts are fitted 
for biting and sucking, and the basal segment of the foot is 
broadened and fitted for carrying pollen from flowers. The 
young of all bees are grublike. 

BEECH TREE, BEECH LEAVES, AND BEECH NUT B EECH - The stately 

beech tree grows for 
50 years before it bears 
its peculiar pyramid¬ 
shaped nuts, but it 
makes a beautiful 
shade tree much 
earlier. The life of 
the tree is about 250 
years. The American 
beech ( Fagus amer- 
icana) grows to be 80 
feet high or more, and 
about 3 Y 2 feet in 
diameter. It has a 
smooth light-gray 
bark, a broad rounded 
top, and serrated 
leaves that turn 
yellow and brown in 
autumn. The Euro¬ 
pean beech ( Fagus 
sylvatica ) often grows 
100 feet high or more, 
and has dark-gray 
bark and shining 
leaves which remain 


on the left is a fine beech tree with its smooth, light grav bark On thp 
right are the leaves, the burrs, and two of the toothsome kernels lying 
° n ^ a . S ^ e u n 0f ‘“^.-squares to show their size. Beechnuts not only 
delight boys and girls, deer and squirrels, but contain a valuable oil. 3 


For any subject not found in its alp ha betical pla 


ce see information 















BEET 


BEETHOVEN 


on the tree most of the winter. The beautiful beeches 


of England have long been famous, as are the beech 
forests of Denmark and Germany. One of the most 
beautiful varieties is the copper beech, which is native 
to Europe, distinguished by its red sap and leaves. 

Beechnuts with other “mast” or forest nuts supply 
pasturage for deer and swine, and boys and girls 
can testify to the toothsomeness of the tiny kernels. 
Beechnut oil is sometimes used in Europe for cooking, 
salad dressing, and lighting. The wood is hard for 
water to penetrate and hence is used in France 
for making wooden 
shoes. It is also much 
used for flooring and 
building timber, and 
for charcoal, and is 
distilled to make the 
finest kind of creosote 
for medicinal use (see 
Creosote). 

Beet. It was said 
of Napoleon that he 
would go down in 
history with a sugar 
beet in one hand and 
the Code Napoleon in 
the other. It is true 
that the great emperor 
did much to encourage 
beet-growing, because 
of England’s practical 
monoply of the col¬ 
onies which produced 
sugar cane; but We are 
chiefly indebted for 
our temperate-zone 
sugar production to 
the scientists of the 
19th century, who 
developed the beet 
from a root producing only seven per cent sugar to 
one which is almost one-fifth sugar, and who are still 
working to improve the sugar content by seed selec¬ 
tion. This remarkable advance in the last 50 years 
provides an admirable illustration of what can be 
done by applying scientific methods to agriculture. 
(See Sugar.) 

Besides the sugar beet, which is usually whitish 
or yellowish, several other species are cultivated. 
Of these the garden beet is the best known, with its 
red root and rather small top. Chard (also called 
Swiss chard) has tall tops with large succulent leaf 
stems which are cooked and eaten somewhat like 
asparagus. Mangels, or “ mangel-wurzels,” are very 
large varieties of beet grown for stock feeding. Foliage 
beets, which have beautifully colored leaves, make 
excellent borders in garden beds. 

The beet (Beta vulgaris) belongs to the family Chenopodia- 
eeae. It is mostly biennial. It is found growing wild in 
sandy soil around the Mediterranean, and has been culti- 

contained in the Easy Reference 


vated for about 2,000 years. Like all root crops, the beet 
needs a loose, light, rich soil, which must be in the best 
condition of tillage. 

Beethoven ( ba'to-viri ), Ludwig van (1770-1827). 
Suffering and success play equal parts in the life of 
the great musician Beethoven. The story begins 
with tears, for at the age of four—to satisfy a selfish 
father—weary, hungry, and cold, he was forced to 
spend hours at the violin and clavier (an early form 
of the piano). It reaches a double climax in the 
episode of the memorable concert, when, after the 

performance of his 
two greatest composi¬ 
tions, the total deaf¬ 
ness of the great 
master made it neces¬ 
sary that he be turned 
to the audience to see 
the overwhelming 
storm of applause 
accorded him. It 
closes with a great 
funeral-pageant, in sad 
contrast to the death¬ 
bed scene in which the 
lonely artist passed 
away, his longing for 
intimate companion¬ 
ship unsatisfied. 

Beethoven, while 
credited to the Ger¬ 
man nation, was of 
Dutch stock. His 
grandfather had re¬ 
moved his family from 
Antwerp to Bonn 
(Germany) 32 years 
before the birth of this 
famous musician. 
Beethoven’s family 
life was always miserable. The meagerness of the 
father’s income as a singer and his intemperate habits 
kept the household always in need. The father 
planned to make of his son a child musician whose 
concert performances would fill the empty family 
purse. But with all his faults, the father must be 
credited with having given his son the best instruc¬ 
tion he could procure for him. When 9 years old 
Ludwig was the pupil of the court organist of Bonn; 
when 11 he made his first concert tour; when 13 he 
became assistant court organist. 

When Beethoven was but 15, the increasing 
incompetence of the father and the ill health of the 
mother made it necessary for him to take entire 
charge of the large family. In spite of these trying 
circumstances, the boy made such progress in his art 
that his friends, impressed by his genius, made it 
possible for him to take up his residence in Vienna, 
then the world’s musical center, and the city in which 
he spent the remainder of his life. Here Beethoven’s 

Fact-Index at the end of this work 

365 


BEETHOVEN AND THE THUNDER OF THE GUNS 



Dread of the deafness which finally afflicted him overshadowed all 
Beethoven’s life. During the siege of Vienna by Napoleon, he retreated 
to a cellar where he tried to shut out the sound of the guns lest they 
should destroy his hearing. 







BEETHOVEN 



BEETLES 


brilliant playing of the clavichord (a development 
of the clavier) at once established him in musical 
circles, and his compositions were eagerly sought by 
publishers. He soon became the foremost musician 
of the day. 

Ears Deaf to the Music that He Made 

These should have been bright years for Beethoven, 
but over all the glory of his success hung the dark 
shadow of a great grief. In the midst of his triumphs 
he became totally deaf. With this affliction came 
periods of intense suffering, caused by some acute 
digestive ailment and aggravated by his highly 
emotional temperament. At such times he was 
nervous and irritable and days of deep remorse 
followed. At last Beethoven entirely withdrew from 
society. His brothers attempted to manage his 
business affairs, entangled him in lawsuits, and 
estranged him from his best friends. A nephew who 
had been left in his care, and on whom Beethoven 
lavished all the affection of his lonely life, proved a 
burden of sorrow and bitterness. 

His habits of living, like his music, knew no rules. 
When composing he could endure no interruption. 
He worked in the greatest disorder and oblivious to 
the passage of time. Unsympathetic housekeepers 
and landlords caused frequent quarrels and changes 
of residence. Beethoven never knew the comfort of 
a real home. He was fond of the country and spent 
much time in the fields, wandering about, singing 
and muttering to himself. Though below medium 
height, his friends say that in moments of inspiration 


his diminutive figure seemed to tower to the gigantic 
proportion of his mind. A letter attached to his 
will begged that his doctor acquaint his friends with 
the physical conditions under which he struggled, 
that they might forgive his seeming harshness, which 
he declared was partially caused by his hopeless 
longing for human intercourse and sympathy. 

And Yet How Splendid the Work He Did! 

Pitiful as Beethoven’s isolation was, it seemed a 
source of inspiration. .Composition after composi¬ 
tion flowed from his pen. All forms of vocal and 
instrumental music—from dainty bagatelle to grand 
symphony, from simple songs to opera, oratorio, 
and mass—are included in his works, 138 in number. 
In all these varied forms Beethoven proved his 
skilful musicianship. His 38 sonatas alone would 
give him a foremost rank among musicians; for he 
took this old set established form for all instrumental 
music and changed it, making it express a freedom 
of art unimagined by his predecessors. It is his 
symphonies, however, that make him incontestably 
preeminent. Richard Wagner, writing of these nine 
compositions, says: “He developed the symphony 
to such a fascinating fullness of form, and filled this 
form with such an unheard-of wealth of enchanting 
melody, that we stand today before the Beethoven 
symphonies as before the boundary line of an entirely 
new epoch in the history of art; for with them a 
phenomenon has appeared in the world, with which 
the art of no time and no nation has had anything 
even remotely to compare.” 



the INSECT WORLD 


Protected Like the Knights of Old, These Doughty Fighters are Continually Engaged in a 
Ruthless Warfare. As Weight-Lifters, Wrestlers, and Acrobats They 
are the Olympic Champions of the Six-Legged Tribes 


tvEETLES. Few members of the insect world are 
-D better fitted for the rough and tumble of everyday 
life than those bold, blundering, hungry freebooters— 
the beetles. Nearly all of them are covered from 
head to foot with strong tough armor-plate, which is 
their skeleton worn on the outside. And in addition 
to this great advantage, they have drawn on nearly 
all the rest of Nature’s bag of tricks for their pro¬ 
tection and support. 

Indeed, if a contest of strength and skill were held 
among insects, the beetles would undoubtedly carry 
off the prize for all-around excellence. There are 
powerful flyers, strong jumpers, fine climbers, and 
swift runners among them; some excel in digging and 


boring, swimming and diving; and as weight-lifters, 
wrestlers, and acrobats, they number in their ranks 
the unquestioned champions of the six-legged tribes. * 

On the other hand, beetles are very poor singers, 
few of them possessing a voice at all, and most of 
those have only a feeble note. As if to make up for 
this, some of them, like the fireflies, have the extraordi¬ 
nary power of giving off bright light in the dark. 

But it is the armor of the beetles that chiefly 
distinguishes them. As you know, it is a distin¬ 
guishing trait of most of the insects to have four 
wings, like butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, etc. In 
the case of the house-fly and other true flies, the hind 
pair of wings has been lost. In the beetles, on the 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see infor 

366 








Several distinguished members of the Beetle family have accepted the artist’s invitation to show off their tricks. Two Wasps, who weren’t 
asked to come at all, are flying around at the top, but you can’t blame them, for that pair of tumble-bugs with their huge ball would make 
anyone stop and look. If they caught sight of that beetle just coming down the tree, they would rush away home, for that is the 
Wasp’s-nest beetle, which lays its eggs near wasp holes and whose young devour the wasp grub. Walking up the tree is a Tim- 
berman and a larger long-horned Musk-beetle. At the foot of the tree a Hercules-beetle is watching a fierce group of Golden Ground 
beetles attacking an earthworm. Behind him is an Oil-beetle. Arriving on the wing at the extreme left is a Blister-beetle. Below 
the Blister-beetle appears a member of the scarab family, and beneath him the curious Caliper-beetle is just thrusting his head 
into the picture. The spotted fellow in the middle is the cruel Tiger-beetle on the lookout for prey. The big black Three-horned 
beetle is next, and below are the Rhinoceros-beetle and the Elephant-beetle. In the pond are two Diving-beetles, while a third 

has come out to try his wings. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

367 
























BEETLES 


The Tiger-Beetle and His Lair 


other hand, something has hap¬ 
pened to the front pair: they have 
turned hard and thick, folding 
down over the back and forming 
part of the creature’s armor-plate. 
These front wings, or “wing-covers” 
as they are called, are not used for 
flying, but are raised on high to per¬ 
mit the filmy delicate hind wings to 
spread out when the beetle wants to 
take an air trip. Then when it 
alights again, the hind wings fold 
up, the armored wing-covers fall 
into place over them, and you 
would never know that the beetle was 
ever meant for anything except running, 
climbing, or swimming. 

How the Beetles Got Their Name 

It is from this peculiarity that the 
beetles get their scientific name Coleop- 
tera, which means “sheath-winged.” 
Another of their qualities is suggested by 
their English name, which comes from 
the Anglo-Saxon word bitel, meaning 
“the biting one.” Most beetles are in¬ 
deed great biters, having strong jaws 
which some use for killing living prey, 
some for devouring trees and plants, 
others for gnawing timber, leather, fur 
cloth, books, etc., and others for tearing 
apart the dead things or refuse on which 
they feed. 

In battle, beetles are honest fighters 
using no stings or poison fangs, but 
grappling boldly “ catch-as-catch-can” 
with jaws and claws. So, despite the fact 
that many beetles look fierce and dan¬ 
gerous, you may pick them up without 
fear, provided you dodge their “pincers” 
and don’t mind the unpleasant smells 
many of them can create when fright¬ 
ened or angered. For this reason, and 
also because they are not easily injured 
by handling, beetles make the most in¬ 
teresting of insect “pets.” If they are 
provided with their natural surround¬ 
ings and their proper food, most of them 
quickly adjust themselves to life in a 
cage and show off their strange habits 
freely. 

Because beetles have so admirably ad¬ 
justed themselves to nearly all conditions 
of life, in nearly all parts of the world, 
the number of their species is believed 
to be greater than that of any other insect 
group, with the possible exception of the 
flies. Scientists have already classified 
more than 100,000 different kinds of 
beetles and more are added to the list 
every year. • 


THE BEETLE AND THE GYPSY MOTH 



This is the Calosoma beetle that was 
specially imported from Europe to help get 
rid of the Gypsy Moth. Here we see him 
about to dine on a Gypsy Moth caterpillar. 




This is a group of the eggs of 
this beetle. They are buried 
in the ground. About a week 
later out come the young lar¬ 
vae, all ready to eat the larvae 
of the Gypsy Moth. 



These are the larvae of the 
beetle. Just as soon as they 
emerge from the ground they 
are able to climb trees and 
begin attacking the caterpillars 
that destroy our vegetation. 



When full-fed the beetle lar¬ 
vae burrow into the earth and 
change to pupae, like this one. 
In a short time they assume 
the adult form andremain in the 
ground until the next season. 


The life-cycle of all beetles has a 
complete metamorphosis, that is 
the beetle egg turns first into a grub 
or larva, then into a pupa, then into 
a full-grown insect (see Insects). 
Beetle larvae, which are usually 
soft-bodied and often wormlike, 
with hard heads and strong jaws, 
are usually very active and often 
more fierce and greedy than the 
grown-ups. 

The smallest beetles are the 
“feather-wings,” no larger than the 
head of a pin; the largest are the 
African “goliaths” and the “elephant- 
beetles” of the West Indies, which reach 
six and seven inches in length and are 
the giants of the insect world. Between 
these two extremes are found beetles of 
all shapes and sizes, long and slim, short 
and fat, and with all the colors of the 
rainbow. Out of their immense number it 
will be possible to mention only a few 
of those which are remarkable for some 
trick or habit or some curious formation. 

A Fierce Hungry Fellow 

Perhaps the most interesting and 
handsome are the “tiger-beetles,” won¬ 
derfully graceful and active insects with 
long slender legs for swift running, and 
colored with brilliant metallic greens and 
blues, sometimes marked with stripes 
or spots. They are fierce bloodthirsty 
creatures an inch or more in length, 
always on the lookout to pounce on 
some fellow insect and devour it. The 
tiger-beetle grubs have a strange way 
of trapping prey. They lie in holes in 
the ground, with their large ugly heads 
blocking the entrance. When an un¬ 
wary insect steps upon its head, the 
grub drops suddenly to the bottom of 
the hole, and the victim tumbles after, 
to be seized and devoured. 

But there’s a much smaller beetle 
called the “bombardier,” which has a 
way of making the hungry “tiger” look 
very foolish. Just as the latter’s jaws 
are about to close upon it, the bombar¬ 
dier fires a little cloud of acrid irritating 
vapor from the rear of its abdomen. If 
once isn’t enough to discourage the pur¬ 
suer, the discharge may be repeated 
several times in succession, each ac¬ 
companied by a faint “pop.” Thus we 
see that “poison gas” in warfare is not 
so novel after all. 

The Tumble-Bugs that Sleep with Kings 

In contrast to the savage tiger-beetles 
are those peaceful, lumbering good- 


For any ,ubject not found in its alphabetical place see information 


368 











LIFE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL’S 
COACH-HORSE 

This fierce little creature belongs 
to the Rove-beetle family, distin¬ 
guished by short wing covers, be¬ 
neath which the wings are folded 
with amazing ingenuity. At the 
top the larva is burrowing in the 
ground and in the second picture it 
is enlarging its resting chamber. 
Next we see it transformed into a 
pupa, and lying beneath its cast 
skin. Then the pupa changes into 
the adult beetle, which crawls out 
and dries its new wings in the sun. 
Now it tucks its wings away under 
the wing-covers, and, in the sixth 
picture, turns its head quickly as it 
scents danger. As the enemy draws 
near, it tries to frighten it away by 
curling up its tail in the most 
threatening manner. This is pure 
bluff, for it has no weapons on its 
tail, and when the enemy—a bit of 
straw—comes close, it pounces 
upon it and seizes it in its jaws. 
The last picture shows the deter¬ 
mined little fighter clinging like a 
bull-dog, when the straw is lifted. 


natured members of the 
“scarab” family — perhaps 
the most famous of all the 
beetles, because their an¬ 
cestors were held sacred by 
the ancient Egyptians, who 
buried them with their 
mummies and carved rare 
stones and gems in their 
likeness. 

One of the scarabs, 
however, wears a clown’s 
costume, and we call it a 
“tumble-bug” and a “dung- 
beetle.” And a most inter¬ 
esting clown it is, too, as 
it carves out a mass of dung 
bigger than itself and rolls 
it into a perfect ball, then 
stands on its head with its 
hind legs up on the ball and 
pushes it along backwards. 
Up hill and down it goes, 
stumbling and kicking, 
crawling around and under 
its treasure, lifting it over 
stones, pulling it out of pits, 
until it finds a spot to suit it. 
There a hole is dug and into 
it the tumble-bug goes with 
its ball, remaining until it is 
entirely eaten. The eggs of 
the tumble-bug are laid in 
similar balls buried in the 
ground. 

The “tumble-bug,” like 
its cousin the “June-bug” 
(see June-Bug), and many 
other beetles, has a very 
hard time getting up if it 
falls on its back on a smooth 


This beetle, by rubbing a kind of file on his 
wing-cover (a) with another file on his leg (b), 
makes a sound which, no doubt, passes for fine 
music in Beetledom. 

consider the menu of the tiny “drug-store beetle,” 
which not only eats any form of dry groceries, but 
delights in such things as red pepper and in at least 
45 different drugs, including aconite, belladona, and 


flat surface. There is a group of beetles, however, 
which has solved this difficulty admirably. They are 
the “click-beetles,” so named because, if they are 
upset, they double up and then suddenly straighten 
out with a “click” which tosses them high into the 
air. Like cats, 
they usually 
land on their 
feet and scurry 
away. These 
acrobats are also 
called “skip¬ 
jacks” and 
“snapping- 
bugs.” Their 
larvae are the 
“wire-worms” 
so destructive 
to farm and 
garden crops 
and fruit trees. 

On the whole, 
the order of 
beetles is very 
harmful, for 
although the 
tiger-beetles, 
the ground- 
beetles, the lady-bugs (see Lady-Bug), and many 
other varieties destroy enormous numbers of plant¬ 
eating insects, and the scavenger and carrion-beetles 
dispose of a great quantity of decaying matter, there 
are far more beetles which feed upon trees, plants, 
fruit, grain, and other valuable foodstuffs. Am ong 
the worst offenders are the rose-chafers, the leaf- 
chafers, nearly all of the long-horned beetles, the 
dreaded potato-bugs, the tortoise-beetles, the dark¬ 
ling-beetles, the asparagus-beetles, those great enemies 
of timber, the engraver-beetles, and, most destructive 
of all, the countless hordes of snout-beetles or weevils 
(see Potato-Bug; Weevils). 

It has been said that there is no animal or vegetable 
substance that is not preyed upon by some member 
of the beetle family. As an example of varied diet 


THE RAP OF THE DEATH-WATCH 


The Death-Watch, instead of trying to 
frighten people, when he makes that 
dreaded rap, is signaling to his lady love. 
Here we see this beetle much magnified, 
raising his head, and then bringing it 
down with a thud. 


HOW MR. BEETLE PLAYS HIS FIDDLE 


BEETLES 


Mr. Skipjack, the Acrobat 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at 

369 


the end of t hi m 


work 

















THE BEETLE PIRATE GETS AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE 


The big Tiger-beetle was interrupted during his dinner of snails by the arrival of two Bombardier-beetles. He made U] 
to have them for dessert, and started in pursuit. Just as his jaws were about to close upon the nearest one, something ^ 
ishing took place. The two Bombardiers fired their little stern-guns loaded with poison gas, and the “tiger” was for 
the chase. This scene, reproduced from a museum group, shows how Nature occasionally plays a rare joke. 


ergot—all three poisonous to man. Printed books are 
not too dry for it nor paraffin too oily. A near 
relative, the “spider-beetle,” one of the varieties 
often called “bookworms,” has a record of having 
“penetrated directly through 27 large volumes in so 
straight a line that a string could be passed through 
the opening and the whole series of volumes sus¬ 
pended.” Another relative, the “cigar-beetle,” dines 
on cigars, cigarettes, and any form of dried tobacco. 

The “Death-Watch” and His Mysterious Tick 

It is to this group of small beetles that the famous 
“death-watch” belongs. Spending its life in tunnels 
bored in furniture or other household timber, this 
creature calls to its mate by tapping its head against 
the sides of its corridors. This faint knocking sound 
was formerly believed to be a warning of impending 
death. 

Other pests are the dermestids or “skin-devouring” 
beetles, including the “larder-beetle,” which feeds on 
smoked meats, hides, feathers, hair, and horn; the 
“leather-beetle” of similar tastes; the “carpet-beetle” 


or buffalo “moth,” which is not a moth at all, but one 
of the worst foes of carpets and stuffed animals and 
other museum specimens. 

One of the strangest of beetles is the “blister-bee¬ 
tle,” sometimes called the “Spanish fly,” for besides 
the fact that its body contains a substance which is 
used medicinally for raising blisters on the human 
skin, it has a most unusual life history. After the 
larva hatches from the egg, it does not go directly into 
the pupa form, but passes first through no less than 
five intermediate larval stages. The wingless “oil- 
beetles” have a similar experience, which is called by 
scientists hypermetamorphosis. 

The Pirates of the Pond 

Among the most interesting water-beetles are the 
large predacious diving beetles, so called because of 
their fierce and bloodthirsty disposition. Shaped like 
huge watermelon seeds, their smooth boat-shaped 
lines and paddle-shaped hind legs make them excellent 
swimmers, enabling them to capture and devour 
almost all of the smaller inhabitants of ponds, includ- 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

370 






ing young fish. When at rest they float head down 
with the tips of their bodies sticking out of the water. 
In this way their spiracles or breathing tubes, situated 
at the rear of the abdomen, have access to the air. 
When they dive they carry down a supply of air 
beneath their water-tight wing-covers. Their larvae, 
known as “ water-tigers,” are even fiercer and hungrier 
creatures than the adults. 

The “water-scavenger” beetles, sometimes one and 
a half inches long, may also be found in quiet pools, 
where they clean up decaying plant and animal mat¬ 
ter. They carry the ati they need for breathing in a 
thin film spread over the under side of their body, 
which gives them a silvery appearance when seen 
from beneath. Unlike the diving beetles they are 
highly desirable pets for an aquarium, for they keep 
it clean without molesting the other inmates. 

The Funniest Beetles of All 

The most amusing of the water-beetles are the 
“whirligigs,” which may be seen on any body of still 
water dancing in rapid circles over the surface, as 
though gone mad. If disturbed, they make a queer 
squeak by rubbing the tip of their abdomen against 
their wing-covers. These whirligigs have split eyes, 
the upper half for seeing objects above the surface, 
the lower half for looking through the water. 

A strange family of creatures called “stylops” is 
sometimes included in the beetle order. Only the 
male has wings; the female spends her entire life in 
the body of some other insect such as a wasp, the 
tip of her body projecting through the segments of 
her host’s abdomen. 

No dragons ever invented to frighten children could 
be stranger in appearance than the monsters of the 
beetle tribe. The ‘‘ stag-beetle” with its great hooked 
mandibles, nearly as long as the insect itself, is per¬ 
haps the most startling of northern species, but the 
tropics have even more remarkable species, such as 
the “centaur-beetle” with its huge cow-like horns; 
the five-horned “rhinoceros-beetle”; the “hercules- 
beetle” with the long wicked-looking projections 
from its head and back used by the male in carrying 
its mate; and many others. Curiously enough, these 
freaks are nearly all the most harmless of all the 
beetles. 

Beetles are not True Bugs 

Though many beetles are popularly called “bugs,” 
they should not be confused with the true bugs with 
sucking beaks, which form a distinct order of insects. 

In addition to the hard wing-covers ( elytra ) which 
dis tinguish beetles from other insects, they have the 
first segment of the thorax, the prothorax , movable. 
To this is attached the first pair of legs, the other two 
pairs being fastened to the second and third segments. 
In certain of the running beetles the hind wings are 
reduced to a very small size, useless for flight, or are 
absent altogether, and in such cases the edges of the 
wing-covers are often grown together. In other 
species, such as the “rove-beetles,” the wing-covers 
reach only a short way down the back, leaving the 


rear of the abdomen exposed. Beetles’ eyes are of 
the large compound variety; the simple eyes or ocelli 
being very rare among adults, even when existing in 
the larvae. The antennae or feelers are of widely 
various forms, sometimes broad and short, sometimes 
twice as long as the beetle’s body. They are organs 
not only of touch, but of smell, and probably of 
hearing. 

Scientific names of best known beetle families: ground- 
beetles, Carabidae; tiger-beetles, Cicindelidae; carrion- 
beetles, Silphidae; rove-beetles, Staphylisnidae; glowworms, 
etc., Lampyridae; click-beetles, Elateridae; water-beetles, 
Hydrophilidae; oil- and blister-beetles, Meloidae; stag- 
beetles, Lucanidae; scarab-beetles, Scarabaeidae; lady-bugs, 
Coccinellidae; weevils, Curculionidae. 

BEGONIA. This common houseplant is cultivated 
for the beauty of both flowers and foliage and is 
easily grown from cuttings taken in the late summer 
and autumn. The flowers are usually large and 
showy, some greenhouse varieties reaching four to 
six inches in length, and vary in color from pink 
to scarlet and from white to yellow. The fleshy 
waxy leaves, large and variegated, are curiously un¬ 
equal-sided. A winged capsule containing numerous 
minute seeds constitutes the fruit of the plant. The 
summer flowering begonia, which produces large 
single and double flowers, is tuberous rooted, while 
the winter flowering variety is fibrous rooted. Two 
other species are the semi-tuberous begonia, with 
peltate leaves, and an Asiatic variety, Rex begonia, 
with handsome striking foliage. 

The begonia is native to the tropics of both hemi¬ 
spheres, excepting Australia. Of the 400 species, 150 
are in ornamental cultivation. The flower was named 
in honor of Michel Begon, a French patron of botany. 
Family name, Begoniaceae. 

Bel fast, Ireland. As the capital of the prov¬ 
ince of Ulster, in northeastern Ireland, Belfast oc¬ 
cupies a prominent position in Ireland today. Its 
inhabitants are Scotch-Irish and Protestant—de¬ 
scendants of Scottish and English colonists of the 17th 
century—and they have built up a town which, in 
population, manufactures, and trade, ranks first in 
prosperity among the cities of Ireland. It is largely 
the fear of economic and religious oppression from the 
agricultural and Catholic majority of the island that 
made Belfast the center of opposition to Home Rule 
for Ireland. 

Situated on the Belfast Lough or Bay, the city has 
large shipyards. It is the center of the Irish linen 
trade and manufacture, and its rope-works and 
tobacco factories are the largest in Great Britain. 

In appearance the city is modern. In the 16th 
century there was only a little fishing village where 
Belfast now stands, and not until the introduction of 
machine spinning and weaving, in the latter part of 
the 18th century, did it begin to thrive. It is now 
a city of fine churches, imposing public buildings, the 
seat of Queen’s University and of a number of church 
schools. Population, about 393,000. 


containe d in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

371 






BELGIUM 



A Hive of Industry 



BRAVE and THRIFTY 
BELGIUM 

The Story of Her Triumphant 
Struggle Between the Warring 
Nations and the Hungry Sea 


B ELGIUM. A triangu¬ 
lar-shaped land,— 
with the long side lying 
along the French border; 
the base resting against 
Luxemburg, Germany, 
and the “panhandle” of 
Dutch Limburg; and the 
third side bordering on 
the shallow North Sea 
and the kingdom of the 
Netherlands (Holland) 

—such is the little king¬ 
dom of Belgium, a land 
which has probably 
played as important a 
part in the world’s af¬ 
fairs, in proportion to its size, as any other country 
since the days of ancient Greece and Rome. During 
every one of the centuries which intervene since the 
Roman conquest, Belgium has been one of the bat¬ 
tlegrounds of Europe. And the struggle has been not 
only with hostile man, but with unfriendly Nature as 
well. Like the fields of Holland, those of Belgium are 
in part the product of careful fertilization of barren 
sand-dunes; and dikes and windmills are still neces¬ 
sary to prevent constant encroachments of the 
hungry sea. 

In this struggle with Nature the Belgians have 
succeeded wonderfully well. Today we find, fring¬ 
ing the sea, only a narrow belt of dunes whose shifting 
sands are overcast with clouds and enveloped in mi st.. 
Behind this bleak region lies a verdant garden in 
which nestle the red-roofed cottages of the peasants. 


The green fields, watered 
by running streams and 
sluggish canals, are rich 
with harvests of wheat 
and rye. In some of the 
fields, men in coarse 
smocks, with their loose 
baggy trousers tied below 
the knee with a cord, are 
spading the ground. In 
others men and women 
kneel and patiently weed 
the flax; while in the 
streams they beat the 
ripened stalks to sepa¬ 
rate the fibers so that 
they can be spun into 
linen thread. Every foot of ground is made to pro¬ 
duce the utmost possible, and grain and sugar beets 
are largely cultivated. But even so Belgium is not 
able to supply food enough for all her people; for 
while its area is about equal to that of Maryland, its 
population is five times as large, making it one of the 
most densely peopled lands in Europe. There are a 
score of thriving cities, and a hundred little villages 
dot the fields; along the banks of the poplar-lined 
canals the peaked roofs of the cottages form an almost 
unbroken line, and on every side rise the innumerable 
towers and spires of the churches. Belgium, indeed, 
is richer in these monuments of medieval architecture 
than any other country except northern France. 

Europe’s Greatest Mart 

In the 14th and 15th centuries Flanders—as western 
Belgium was then called—was the richest part of 


For any .abject not found in it. alphabetical place .ee information 

372 


TT/'HAT dreadful scenes of carnage have been enacted 
Nr “in Flanders’ fields,” ever since those ancient days 
when Caesar first wrote of the bravery of the Belgae! 
Romans, Franks, and Northmen pass bloodily over the 
land; sturdy Flemish burghers withstand their feudal 
count in the tumults of the Hundred Years’ War; 200 years 
later Belgium groans beneath the tyranny and massacres 
of Spanish Philip II and his agent, the Duke of Alva; the 
English Marlborough and the Austrian Prince Eugene here 
successfully resist Louis XIV’s attempt to annex the rich 
provinces to France; again Belgium is the cockpit of 
Europe when Napoleon is overthrown at Waterloo; and 
when the thunders of the World War begin in 1914, be¬ 
trayed Belgium feels the first fury and wins the last release 
from Germany’s “will to conquer.” But after all the waste 
of war Belgium remains a thriving happy land, a veritable 
hive of human industry, and a pilgrim resort for lovers of 
art and beauty. 









BELGIUM 



^ ZUIDER v 
V^arken A 


HooK of Holland 

'waqg^SSI 


Flushini 


isseidopf 


Cologne 


tx-la-Chapelle 

achenV, 


LiUe 


ElsenBorn 

MalroedyJ^ 


Valenciennes e 


Maubeu; 


St. Quentin 


dJXEMBURG 


Luxemburg 


oLaon 


5j East Lon g itude: 


) The Rivalry of the Cities" 


Europe. The little rivers, the Reye, the Yser, and 
the Lys, were choked with the fleets from all parts of 
the known world. The wharves of Ghent were piled 
with bales of wool from England and with casks of 
wine from southern France. The vast cloth hall of 
¥pres was crowded with eager merchants struggling 


for the products of the Flemish looms and the handi¬ 
work of the patient lacemakers. And it is said that 
merchants from 17 kingdoms had settled homes in 
Bruges, the great northern market of Europe. 


Much of the money gained from this commerce 
was used in building churches, but more was used in 
the construction of their town-halls and belfries. 
The people were jealous of the glories of their towns. 
No one spoke of being a citizen of Flanders, but he 
was a man of Bruges, of Ghent, or of Ypres, as the 

case might be. 

One of the fascinat¬ 
ing stories of history 
is that of the struggle 
of these cities to gain 
more privileges from 
their counts and 
dukes. One of their 
demands was for the 
right to build a belfry, 
from which the curfew 
(couvre feu, “cover 
fire”) should-ring each 
night, and the alarm 
bell when the town 
was threatened by fire 
or by hostile attack. 
Many a time during 
the 14th, 15th, and 
16th centuries did 
these tocsins call the 
burghers to arms; for 
the cities were forced 
to defend their rights 
alike against the kings 
of France, the dukes 
of Burgundy, the 
kings of Spain, and 
the Holy Roman em¬ 
perors. Before the 
long struggle was over 
much of their com¬ 
merce was ruined and 
these formerly busy 
marts had lost their 
independence and po¬ 
litical importance, but 
not their picturesque 
charm. 

The present-day 
gateway to this 
garden-land of Eu¬ 
rope is Antwerp, 
which in the 15th 
century wrested from 
Bruges its commer¬ 
cial supremacy. It 
lies on the winding 
course of the Scheldt 
River, 50 miles from 
the sea, and the inhabitants of the city say that 
“the whole world is a ring, in which Antwerp is 
the diamond.” South of Antwerp lies Brussels, the 
well-built modern capital of the kingdom. Down 


Belgium’s own industries make it the most densely populated country in Europe and the industrial 
portions of France and Germany border it on each side, while the fertile fields of the Netherlands lie 
to the north. In the “Black Country” to the south the land rises to two thousand feet above the sea, 
but the northern region is mostly as flat as a table. 









BELGIUM 



Work and Play at Ostend 



BRUGES, THE “CITY OF BRIDGES” 


Here is a typical view of this ancient city, the smooth waters of whose canals reflect solid old buildings and pleasant parkways. 
Tire name Bruges comes from the old German for “bridge,” given to it because of the many bridges over its canals. On these 
canals are seen many stately swans, maintained by the city in expiation of a crime committed during a medieval revolt, the killing 

of a magistrate, who had a swan on his coat-of-arms. 



its streets clatter the Flemish milkmaids in their 
wooden shoes and their huge white caps and their 
large gold earrings. Rough good-natured dogs draw 
little carts filled with 
shining brass and cop¬ 
per milk-cans. From 
the houses comes the 
hum of looms, for al¬ 
though Belgium has 
many large textile 
factories, much of the 
work is still done at 
home. In Brussels 
hundreds of women sit 
all day long patiently 
weaving in and out the 
threads of fine Brussels 
point-lace. For more 
than 400 years the 
country has been fa¬ 
mous for its lace manu¬ 
facture, not only of 
Brussels lace, but also 
of the airy Mechlin 
lace and the fine 
Valenciennes. The 
well-known Brussels 
carpets are not made in Brussels, but at Tournay, a 
busy town on the Scheldt, some 50 miles away to the 
southwest. Everyone, everywhere, seems to be busy— 


except at Ostend. This is the great seaside resort, 
and one of the playgrounds of all Europe. But even 
Ostend has it industrious side, for it is the second port 

in the kingdom, con¬ 
nected by canal with 
the quaint old cities of 
Bruges and Ghent, and 
is the center of the Bel¬ 
gian fishing and oyster 
industry. In the 
World War Ostend was 
captured by the Ger¬ 
mans and served as one 
of their main sub¬ 
marine bases. 

To the southeast of 
Brussels the skies at 
night are aflame with 
the glare of the iron 
furnaces and the glass 
and other factories at 
Liege. This is one of 
the busiest parts of the 
great workshop of Eu¬ 
rope, because of the 
gifts which Nature has 
lavished upon this sec¬ 
tion. Indeed, it is Belgium’s rich mines of coal and 
iron—supplemented by the near-by iron ores of 
Luxemburg and northern France—which make her 


In Belgium you don’t watch for the milkman, you watch for the milk¬ 
maid with her dog-cart. The milk is brought in cans of copper and 
brass, from which it is dipped out into your own jug. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

374 


place see information 














IN THE HEART OF OLD ANTWERP 



This picturesque city, one of the greatest seaports in the world, has a history reaching back to the days of the Northmen. We are 
here in the center of the oldest part of the city, where stands the cathedral, the largest and most beautiful Gothic church in the 
Netherlands. In the foreground stands a figure of the Lion of Belgium. Many of the buildings in this quarter are the ancient 
gild houses of medieval days. These contrast strangely with the modern structures in the right foreground. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

375 



















































BELGIUM 


BELGRADE 


an industrial country. Even the sand of her dunes 
is made use of in the thriving manufacture of glass. 
But though rich in natural resources, this region is 
poor in beauty. The earth is scarred and disfigured 
by the refuse from the mines. The villages, stretch¬ 
ing over a gray country, are lost behind mountains 
of coal ash, or 
crouch beside the 
towering chimneys 
of hugh factories. 

Even the people 
are different from 
those in the north¬ 
ern half of Belgium, 
and they speak a 
different language 
They are known as 
“Walloons,” and 
their speech is a 
dialect of the 
French; while 
about Antwerp 
and Brussels and 
throughout the 
north the people 
are “Flemish” and 
speak a tongue 
closely akin to 
Dutch. 

To the south of 
the factories and 
the mines of the 


THE TRADE CENTER OF BELGIUM 


While the Germans ruled in Belgium (1914-18), they fol¬ 
lowed a policy which seemed deliberately intended to crush 
Belgian trade competition. Of the 50 steel furnaces, 35 to 
40 were destroyed; many of the textile mills were put out of 
commission; machines by the thousands, railroad locomo¬ 
tives and cars, and all available raw materials were carried 
off to Germany, together with tens of thousands of horses 

and cattle; Belgian 



This is the Brussels Bourse, the market for the buying and selling of securities 
corresponding to the New York Stock Exchange. It was here that the agents 
of the famous King Leopold, the best financier who ever sat on a throne, con¬ 
ducted many of the negotiations by which the King sold the Congo Free State 
to his people—the greatest real estate deal in history. 


“Black Country” lie the somber woods and the swift¬ 
flowing rivers of the Ardennes hills, which in places 
are 2,000 feet high. The wild boar still lives in these 
protected forests, much as it did more than 1,100 
years ago when Charlemagne hunted through these 
woods. 

During the Middle Ages the towns of Flanders had built 
up an industry and commerce which rivaled that of the early 
20th century. But in the time that followed, when the 
land was handed about from one country to another—when 
the Duke of Burgundy sought to repress the free spirit of 
the towns; when Philip II of Spain, through his general 
Alva, drenched the land with blood; and when Austria, 
after obtaining these provinces by the treaty of Utrecht 
(1713), tried to crush the liberties of the people—the indus¬ 
tries suffered severely. Belgium was annexed to France 
at the time of the French Revolution, but handed over to 
Holland as part of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. 
Not until 1830 did the kingdom of Belgium as we know it 
come into existence. Then, with its neutrality guaranteed 
by that treaty which Germany tore up as a “scrap of paper” 
in 1914, Belgium entered upon its period of greatest pros¬ 
perity. Since 1830 three kings have ruled the country— 
Leopold I, Leopold II, and Albert I, the present king. The 
government is a constitutional monarchy. 

The chief questions that have disturbed the country have 
been the rule over Congo territory (which King Leopold II 
long held as a private possession), suffrage, and socialism. 
The first was settled in 1908 by turning over the Congo 
state to Belgium as a colony. The second was not satis¬ 
factorily arranged at the beginning of the World War, for 
the Socialists, who were constantly gaining in strength, 
wished for complete manhood suffrage. 


men and women, 
moreover, were forc¬ 
ibly deported and 
obliged to work for 
their enemies. The 
historic university 
city of Louvain was 
one of many towns 
and villages deliber¬ 
ately burned by the 
German army as 
punishment for 
alleged acts of hos¬ 
tility by the inhabi¬ 
tants. The people 
remaining in Belgium 
were kept alive largely 
by the efforts of 
Herbert Hoover as 
head of the Commis¬ 
sion for Relief in 
Belgium, and by loans 
from the American 
government totaling 
$180,000,000. Since 
the close of the war 
the recovery of Bel¬ 
gium has been rapid. 
Area (including two 


small districts annexed from Germany) 11,760 square miles; 
population, about 7,600,000. 

BELGRADE ( bel-grad'), Serbia. Before the Aus¬ 
trian cannon had laid Belgrade, the Serbian capital, 
in ruins during the early months of the World 
War of 1914-18, its inhabitants spoke of it affec¬ 
tionately as “the little Paris.” And they had reason, 
for despite the fact that it had only about 90,000 
people, it was one of the gayest capitals of Europe, 
recalling the greater Paris in its wide and crowded 
boulevards, its innumerable cafes, its lively theaters 
and music halls, and its beautiful parks and gardens. 
During the last generation it had lost much of the 
Oriental air which centuries of Turkish rule had given 
the old city, and had taken on the appearance of a 
Western metropolis, with electric lighting and fussy 
little street cars darting up and down the hilly streets. 

Belgrade has a dominating situation on a ridge at 
the junction of the Danube and Save rivers. On a 
chalk cliff at the apex, overlooking the broad blue lake 
formed by the meeting of the rivers, stood the once 
white walls and towers of the ancient citadel, formerly 
an important fortress. It is from this citadel that 
Belgrade got its name, which means “White Castle.” 

Though the people of Belgrade have adopted the 
sober dress of Paris and London, the streets of the 
city are gay with the picturesque and brilliant peasant 
costumes, for Belgrade is the trading center as well as 


For any .abject not found in it. alphabetical place .ee information 

376 












the capital of Serbia. No industries of importance 
have been developed, however, because of the scarcity 
of capital and labor. 

Few cities have seen more battles plots, and crimes 
than Belgrade. As early as the 3rd century b.c. it 
was a fortified post. The Turks called it the “home 
of wars for the faith,” because before its walls they 
fought for a passageway for their rule and the Moham¬ 
medan religion into central Europe. As the key to 
Hungary and the gateway to Serbia, it was coveted 
by both Christians and Turks, and changed 
masters again and again. 

Although Serbia was freed 
from direct Turkish rule in 
1829, the Turkish garrison 
was not withdrawn from 
Belgrade until 1867. Dur¬ 
ing the World War it was 
reduced to ruins by the 
Austrians and twice cap¬ 
tured by them, the last time 
on Dec. 13, 1914. It was 
not regained by the Serbians 
until Nov. 3, 1918. 

Bell. When the armistice 
that ended the World-War 
of 1914-1918 was signed, 
thousands of church bells 
throughout the United 
States and the other vic¬ 
torious nations pealed out 
the glad tidings. Some of 
the English bells that were 
set swinging on that day are 
so ancient that they may 
have been used to celebrate 
every notable event in Eng¬ 
lish history, from the signing 
of the Magna Carta in 
1215, and have tolled for 
every ruler of England since 
the death of John Lackland. 

Voices of History in the Bells 

From the early centuries 
of the Christian era the ring¬ 
ing of great bells has been 
used to mark the divisions 
of the day, to summon the 
faithful to prayer, and to 
announce tidings of joy or 
sorrow. They have sounded 
the alarm of fire and the 
tocsin of war, and have 
given the signal for many a 
deed of terror and blood 
At Eastertide in 1282 the 
vesper bells of Messina 
marked the beginning of 
one of the most atrocious 
massacres in history, which 


has ever since been known as the “Sicilian vespers.” 
And on Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1547, church 
bells gave the signal for the massacre of thousands of 
Huguenots in France. 

In the days of ancient Greece and Rome bells of 
this sort were unknown. The only bells the ancients 
had were small handbells, often shaped like the 
square-mouthed bells we tie to the necks of sheep and 
cattle, or they were closed bells like our sleigh-bells. 
Such small bells were hung about the necks of dogs 
and cattle, and small tinkling bells of gold were 
attached to the dress of 
high-priests of the Hebrews. 
The First Church Bells 
By the 5th or 6th cen¬ 
turies of our era, when 
Christianity had firmly 
established itself in the 
Roman Empire, bells were 
in use in Christian churches. 
At first they were of small 
size, but gradually they be¬ 
came larger, and were placed 
in high towers so that they 
could be heard throughout 
the city. Sometimes these 
towers were built as a part 
of the church; but often 
they were separate struc¬ 
tures, especially in Italy, 
where the bell-towers or 
campaniles (from the Latin 
word campana meaning 
“bell”), developed into 
structures of extraordinary 
beauty. Among the most 
famous and beautiful of 
existing bell-towers are the 
campanile of Saint Mark’s 
at Venice, which collapsed 
in 1902 after standing a 
thousand years, and was 
rebuilt in 1912; the leaning 
tower of Pisa; and Giotto’s 
campanile at Florence. The 
beautiful tower form de¬ 
veloped by the builders of 
the Middle Ages has been 
copied by modern architects 
for the towers of some of 
our great sky-scrapers. 

The earliest bells pre¬ 
served in the British Isles, 
like the famous Saint Pat¬ 
rick’s bell at Belfast, which 
is supposed to date from 
the 6th century, were of the 
ancient rectangular shape, 
and they were made of thin 
plates of metal riveted 



No skilled performer on the piano or any other musical 
instrument ever took more pride in his work than did the 
old bell-ringers of England, such as Dickens has immortal¬ 
ized in his story of ‘The Chimes’. You see how this old 
gentleman operates three bells by using his foot as well as 
his hands. Bell-ringing is still an accomplishment in 
rural England. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

377 









BELL 


At Play with the Bells 



together. Gradually men learned the art of casting 
bells in one piece, and worked out the familiar 
curving bell-shape which produces the most bril¬ 
liant tone and the longest vibrations. 


THE BELLS OF ST. CLEMENT’S 



Here is a view inside the tower of the famous bells of St. 
Clement’s in London. Eight of the bells are attached to those 
wheels you see in the upper room, while the ninth, the Sanctus 
bell, is lodged in the steeple. 

The process of casting bells is much the same today 
as it was many centuries ago. A core of bricks is built 
up and covered with soft clay, molded to the outline 
of the inside of the bell. Then an outer mold or 
“cope” of clay is made, shaped to the outline of the 
outer surface of the bell, and the molten metal is 
poured in and left to harden. When the molds are 
removed the bell may be tuned to the desired tone by 
taking off thin shavings from the inside. 

Metals Used for Bells 

From the earliest times—as far back as the days of 
Nineveh—the metal most used was an alloy of copper 
and tin in various proportions (see Alloys). Iron and 
steel were occasionally used, but bells so made are 
much inferior in tone. 


It has long been customary to hang several bells of 
different pitch together, which are made to sound one 
after the other and thus play simple tunes; these are 
called a “peal” of bells, or “chimes.” Each bell was 
rung by pulling a separate rope. As the number of 
bells increased from 3 to 8, or even 12, an elaborate 
art of bell-ringing was developed. With three bells, 
only six “changes,” or sequences, are possible, while 
eight bells give the enormous number of 40,320 
changes. With 12 bells the number is so great 
that it has been calculated that to ring the changes 
at the rate of two strokes to the second would re¬ 
quire 91 years. Bell-ringing became a fascinating 
popular amusement in England in the 17th century. 
Societies were formed all over the kingdom which 
performed wonderful feats of accuracy and endur¬ 
ance in competition. The patterns or tunes were 
worked out by experts and received many queer 
names, such as “Kent treble bob major,” “Grand- 
sire Triples,” “Treble bob royal.” The art of bell¬ 
ringing is still practiced with enthusiasm in rural 
England. 

In the United States and the Continental countries, 
especially Belgium, chiming is usually done by 
mechanical devices. Sometimes as many as 60 or 70 
bells are thus played by means of a keyboard or 
levers, so that any tune may be played with its accom¬ 
panying harmonies. In “ringing,” properly so called, 
the bells are swung through a complete revolution, 
resting bottom-upward at the end of each swing. 
“Chiming” is the technical term for swinging the bells 
in their normal position just far enough to be struck 
by the clapper, or for producing tones by striking the 
stationary bells 
with small ham¬ 
mers. The latter 
method is used in 
all mechanically 
operated chimes or 
carillons. These 
carillons are some¬ 
times played by 
means of a cylinder, 
just like a barrel- 
organ, which is set 
off at regular inter¬ 
vals by clockwork 
or by turning a 
crank by hand. 

In this country 
bells are custom¬ 
arily used only for 
striking the hours, 
for fire-alarms, for 
special celebra¬ 
tions, and for announcing religious services. In the 
older nations many of the ancient uses still survive. 
The bell in the parish church sounds the rising signal 
at five or six o’clock, indicates the time for dinner, and 
sounds the curfew or retiring signal at eight or nine. 


For any .abject not found in it. alphabetical place ,ee information 

378 


THE MOST CRITICAL MOMENT 



Casting a bell is a very difficult art, 
for the slightest flaw, such as an air 
bubble or a tiny crack that comes as 
the metal cools, may ruin its musical 
note. 









































































j “Bedtime” Say the Bells 


BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM [ 




The curfew (from the largest bell 

the French couvre.t 
feu , “cover fire”) 
has rung in many 
parts of England 
every night since 
the time of William 
the Conqueror. In 
many places in the 
United States it 
has been intro¬ 
duced as a signal— 
say at nine o’clock 
—when children 
unaccompanied by 
adults must leave 
the streets and go 
home. At Oxford 
University, 101 
strokes are rung 
on “Great Tom” in 
Christ Church Col¬ 
lege at nine o’clock 
every evening to 
warn the under¬ 
graduates to return 
to their colleges. 

Smaller bells of 
various shapes are 
used for an infinite 
variety of purposes 
—attached to 
clocks to sound the 
hours or to waken 
us in the morning, 
to summon us to 
the telephone or 

announce the presence of a visitor at the door, to call 
us to meals, and to summon servants. Instruments 
of various bell-types are also important members of 
the modern orchestra (see Musical 
Instruments). 

The Giants among Bells 

The largest bell ever cast is the 
“Czar Kolokol” at Moscow, which 
weighed about 220 tons when it was 
cast in 1733. It has never been rung, 
however, as it was cracked in the cast¬ 
ing. This great bell is more than 22 
feet in diameter and stands 19 feet 3 
inches high; it now rests on a raised 
platform and is used as a chapel. 

Another Moscow bell, the largest in 
actual use, weighs 110 tons. There is 
a great bell of about 87 tons in a 
pagoda in Upper Burma, and one of 
53 tons at Peking. Besides these mon- 
archs the other famous bells of the world are dwarfs. 
“Great Paul” in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, 
weighs 17 tons; “Big Ben” in the Westminster clock 


in THE WORLD tower of the Houses 

of Parliament, 
London, 1334 tons; 
“Great Tom” at 
Oxford, 6 tons. 
The largest bell in 
the New World is 
in the Cathedral of 
Notre Dame, Mon¬ 
treal, and weighs 
14)4 tons. The 
most famous bell 
of the United 
States is the Lib¬ 
erty Bell, which 
rang out the news 
of the Declaration 
of Independence 
in 1776. 

Bell, Alexan¬ 
der Graham 
(born 1847). Other 
men before Bell had 
worked at the prob¬ 
lem of transmitting 
to a distance the 
sound of the human 
voice, and many 
other men since 
have helped to im¬ 
prove and perfect 
Bell’s invention. 
But Alexander 
Graham Bell will 
always be remem¬ 
bered as the real 
father of the first 

practicable electric telephone. 

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was 
educated in the Universities of Edinburgh and Lon¬ 
don. In 1870 he removed to Canada 
with his father and the rest of the 
family. His father and his grandfather 
before him had devoted their lives to 
the study of human speech and to 
teaching the deaf and dumb to speak, 
and this became the profession also 
of Alexander Graham Bell. 

During 1874-75 he worked at the 
problem of the telephone. It was on 
March 11, 1876, that the first spoken 
message successfully transmitted by 
wire was sent by him to his assistant 
in a Boston hotel. He filed his appli¬ 
cation for a patent for his invention 
on March 14 of that year, just two 
hours before Elisha Gray filed a notice 
in the Patent Office covering some of the same prin¬ 
ciples. At the Centennial Exposition of 1876, in 
Philadelphia, the demonstrations of Bell’s telephone 


The Czar bell in Moscow is the largest bell in the world. It is 19 feet high, 60 
feet in circumference, and weighs 220 tons. The outside is adorned with 
inscriptions and reliefs. The bell was cast in 1733, but before it left the foundry 
a fire broke out, and cracked it as you see here, so that its giant voice was 
never heard. 


ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 


Inventor of the Telephone 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the 

379 


end of t hit 


work 



















|BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM 



BENARES 



This spot in the Marne valley in France is sacred to the memory of American soldiers. Those rows of white tombstones mark the 
graves of the heroes of the Marine Corps who died in the battle of Belleau Wood. This photograph was taken not long after that 
fierce encounter, in which the Marines drove through the German lines under a hail of shot and shell. The torn trees in the fore¬ 
ground show the effects of the withering artillery fire. 


made a great sensation. That same year he erected 
the first real telephone line, in Brantford, Canada, 
where his father resided. Soon telephone systems 
were to be found in every city, and today Bell’s inven¬ 
tion is a necessary part of the equipment of every 
factory and office, and of most up-to-date homes. 

In his later years Mr. Bell has resided in Washing¬ 
ton, D. C. He rendered many public services, and 
made many other inventions; and he was honored by 
universities and learned societies throughout the 
world. His fame, however, will always rest on the 
invention of the telephone—by means of which we 
now speak across seas and continents, with or without 
wires, and can even communicate with the aviator in 
the clouds. 

BELLEAU (be-ld') wood, France. Five and a half 
miles northwest of Chateau-Thierry stands Belleau 
Wood—now officially named “Bois de la Brigade 
Marine”—the scene of one of the first and most 
glorious exploits of the American troops in the World 
War of 1914^18. There, early in June 1918, the 
marines of the 2nd Division, assisted by the regulars 
of the 3rd Division, advanced into a rocky jungle of 
machine-gun nests, and alternately held fast or 
charged with their battle-cry of “E-e-e-e-e y-a-a-h-h-h 
yip!” until they had driven out the Germans and 
captured the village of Bouresches, two miles to the 
south. Of this exploit the report of the Secretary of 
the Navy says: 


“In all the history of the Marine Corps there is no 
such battle as that one in Belleau Wood. Fighting 
day and night without relief, without sleep, often 
without water, and for days without hot rations, the 
Marines met and defeated the best divisions that 
Germany could throw into the line. The heroism and 
doggedness of that battle are unparalleled. Time after 
time officers seeing their lines cut to pieces, seeing 
their men so dog tired that they even fell asleep under 
shell fire, hearing their wounded calling for the water 
that they were unable to supply, seeing men fight on 
after they had been wounded and until they dropped 
unconscious; time after time officers seeing these 
things, believing that the very limit of human endur¬ 
ance had been reached, would send back messages to 
their post command that their men were exhausted. 
But in answer to this would come the word that the 
lines must hold, and if possible those lines must attack. 
And the lines obeyed. Without water, without food, 
without rest they went forward—and forward every 
time to victory. Companies had been so torn and 
lacerated by losses that they were hardly platoons; 
but they held their lines and advanced them. In 
more than one case companies lost every officer, leav¬ 
ing a sergeant and sometimes a corporal to command, 
and the advance continued.” 

Benar es, India. With its 1,500 temples and more 
idols than inhabitants, the ancient city of Benares 
is the Mecca of all Hindus. Its very air is holy, its 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

380 







BENARES 


| Life’s Panorama on the Ganges 



THE HOLY CITY OF THE HINDUS 



whose waters you see on the right, makes a magnificent sweep some four miles in length. On the 
ising bank stands this group of great temples. During certain seasons of the year the river here is 
filled with pilgrims from all parts of India, purifying themselves in the holy waters. In the foreground of this picture are the “burning 
ghats” where you see a little group of people about a pyre ready for the cremation of a body. 


soil so sanctified that to carry away its dust on 
your feet is a sin. Pilgrims in countless numbers 
visit it to wash their sins away in the sacred Ganges, 
and many of the wealthy spend their declining days 
here, for he who dies at Benares is sure of immediate 
admission into heaven. 

From the river you see Benares as a richly colored 
jumble of temples, mosques, palaces, domes, and 
minarets flung haphazard along the steep bank. At 
the water’s edge run the famous ghats (steps), a four- 
mile curving row of stone terraces. 

You cannot see the city from a gharri (carriage); 
its canyon-like streets, rising in narrowing flights of 
steps, are barely wide enough for a single horseman. 
You must go on foot through the cold slippery pass¬ 
ageways, threading your course amid bewildered pil¬ 
grims making the rounds of the sacred road (called 
Panch-kos ) and thus being cleansed from all sin. Now 
and then you will have to give way to a sacred bull 
which wanders unrebuked from one grain-seller’s stall 
to another, nibbling where he will. You pass the 
Golden Temple, holiest of all, its floor paved with 
silver rupees, and go into a crowded sanctuary, where 
burning camphor-laden leaves are dropped by wor¬ 
shipers, crowding round the mouth of a pit, to illumine 
far below a flower-enshrined image of the god Siva. 


Often you stop to watch a weary sinner, who has 
stepped aside a moment from the surging throng to 
make puja (worship) before a shrine, at which he 
leaves two pice (copper coins) and a load of sins. 
Beggars swarm everywhere. 

Go down to the ghats—what a sight greets the sun 
each morning as it rises out of the richest plain in all 
India! Gray granite and red temple walls, the golden 
shafts of slender spires, the stately minarets of a 
hidden mosque, a mullah (Mohammedan priest) 
counting his beads while he drones a passage from the 
Koran, monkeys gamboling over temple walls, lazy 
fakirs (holy men) clothed in nakedness and ashes, fat 
Brahman priests thumbing sacred texts beneath 
flame-colored umbrellas. The sweeper’s wife, knee- 
deep in “Mother Gunga,” as the Ganges is piously 
called, dabbles at a red sari or copper pot, her prayers 
finished; three feet away a high-caste banker, filling 
his cupped hands with Ganges water, sends his praises 
to the sun, “who illumines the whole world, the lord 
of all creatures—may he enlighten my soul!” 

Naked children dart in and out of the water near 
a great pyre or funeral fire, where circling wreaths of 
smoke rise around a smoldering corpse, while the soul, 
freed by the cleansing flames, slips out into the next 
stage of endless reincarnation. Troops of women, 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

381 








BENARES 


BENTON 



their abolutions over, patter off up the steps, straight 
of limb, aristocratic in every line, like slim goddesses. 
The tinkle of their silver anklets mingles with the 
ceaseless chatter of monkeys, the rattle of metal and 
resounding clang in the brassware bazaars, sharp 
piercing conch blasts, the muffled murmur of swarm¬ 
ing worshipers, the deep booming of the temple drums. 

.Benares was a center of importance when Buddha came 
there, six centuries before Christ, but its buildings are all 
comparatively modern. The houses are generally shops on 
the ground floor; their upper stories, often as many as five 
or six, are made more livable by projecting balconies and 
verandas and their walls are garish with bright colors. 
Population, about 200,000. 

Benedict XV, Pope (bom 1854). Giacomo della 
Chiesa, the present Pope, comes of an ancient and 
noble family of Genoa, which counts in its history two 
saints, a cardinal, and several bishops. Perhaps it 
was this tradition that early turned inclinations of the 
young Giacomo to the church. In obedience to his 
father’s wishes he completed a course in law at the 
University of Genoa, winning a high place in his class. 
But the day that he took his degree, he said: 

“Father, I have obeyed you about my studies and 
now wish my reward. I must enter the church.” 

He was ordained to the priesthood at 24, and be¬ 
came secretary to Cardinal Rampolla, papal nuncio 
at Madrid and later the papal secretary of state at 
Rome. In this capacity he gained an acquaintance 
with international politics and diplomatic procedure 
which proved invaluable when he himself was elevated 
to the highest office in the church. 

In 1907 the future Pope was created archbishop of 
Bologna. In May 1914, he was made a cardinal; and 
in September of the same year, following the death of 
Pope Pius X, he was elected Pope in a conclave which 
lasted only four days—the shortest in the history of 
the Papacy. 

The new Pope found himself facing such prob¬ 
lems as had confronted none of his predecessors. 
Half the world was in arms, waging the fiercest strug¬ 
gle of all time; and adherents of the Catholic faith 
were found on both sides. The policy he set for him¬ 
self was the observance of strictest neutrality, accom¬ 
panied by unremitting endeavor to effect peace at the 
earliest possible moment. 

The Pope outspokenly condemned Germany’s viola¬ 
tions of the laws of war, such as the destruction of 
the cathedral of Reims, and obtained some improve¬ 
ment in the treatment of prisoners of war by the 
Central Powers. In August 1917 he invited the 
belligerents to make peace upon a basis of the restitu¬ 
tion of all occupied territory, renunciation of indemni¬ 
ties, decrease in armaments, freedom of the seas, and 
international arbitration. The Central Powers re¬ 
turned an evasive reply. President Wilson, as spokes¬ 
man for the Allied Powers, answered by pointing out 
in substance that such a program would be fruitless 
so long as the people of Germany were dominated by 
an irresponsible and militaristic government, whose 
word could not be trusted. 


Pope Benedict is an accomplished and ardent 
scholar, remaining true amid the distractions of his 
busy career to the ideal of his youth. So intense was 
his devotion to his studies as a lad that his mother, to 
induce him to take needed exercise, gave him a spade 
and bade him spend a few minutes every day digging 
in the garden. A palm planted by the future Pope 
is now one of the most prized possessions of his boy¬ 
hood home. As Pope, he still clings to the studious 
and simple habits of his youth, being always found at 
his altar by half past five or six, and at his desk ready 
for the day’s work by eight o’clock. 

Of the earlier popes who have borne the name Benedict, 
the first (574-78) died of grief during the Lombard devasta¬ 
tion of Italy. Benedict V (964-65) was carried to Germany 
by the Emperor Otto I and died a prisoner there. The name 
Benedict XIII was taken by the Spaniard Peter de Luna, 
one of the anti-popes (1394-1409) at Avignon during the 
Great Schism; it was also borne by the canonical pope at 
Rome (1724-30). BenedictXIV (1740-58) was renowned for 
his great learning and piety, and for his measures to promote 
the well-being of the city of Rome. 

BENEDICTINES. An order of monks established by 
St. Benedict in Italy about 530 a.d. Because of the 
color of their robes they are sometimes called “Black 
monks.” There is also an order of nuns of the same 
name. (See Monks and Monasticism.) 

BENGAL'. A province in the northeastern part of 
British India, with an area (78,700 square miles) about 
equal to that of Kansas, and a population (about 
45,000,000) more than two-fifths that of the United 
States; before its partition in 1912, its area was almost 
twice as large. It includes the fertile deltas of the 
Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. The best cotton of 
India is grown in Bengal, and it is a chief center of 
the manufacture of cotton goods. The staple crop is 
rice, and other important products are dates, sugar, 
wild silk, jute, tea, and opium. The province is also 
rich in coal and iron. Calcutta is the capital and 
largest city. 

Bengal was the first district in India in which the 
British passed from mere trading rights to the exercise 
of the right of government. Here was fought (in 
1757) the battle of Plassey which established British in 
place of French supremacy. The people are pre¬ 
dominantly Hindus, intelligent, politically active, but 
non-warlike. (See Calcutta; India.) 

Benton, Thomas Hart (1782-1858). The firstand 
one of the greatest of statesmen to arise in the vast 
region west of the Mississippi River was Thomas Hart 
Benton, for 30 years United States senator from 
Missouri. Although Benton typified the West and 
identified himself largely with its interests, he is for¬ 
gotten by many today, while his great contemporaries, 
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, the champions of North 
and South, are remembered by all. 

Born in the interior of North Carolina, Benton fol¬ 
lowed the frontier to Tennessee, where he was ad¬ 
mitted to the bar and began his political career as a 
member of the state senate. Although he was a mem¬ 
ber of Gen. Andrew Jackson’s staff during a part of 
the War of 1812, the two became involved in a duel, 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

382 







Cardinal Giacomo della Chiesa was leading the life of a quiet scholar in Rome when Pope Pius X died in 1914. He was known only 
to a few churchmen outside of Italy. Then he was elected to the chair of St. Peter, after the shortest conclave in the history of the 
Papacy, and within two hours his name had flashed to every corner of the earth. The quiet scholar had become the spiritual head 

of 275,000,000 Roman Catholics throughout the world. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

383 











































in which Jackson was wounded, and this broke the 
friendship between them for many years. After 
Benton entered the United States Senate, in 1821, his 
political views coincided so closely with those of “Old 
Hickory” that it was impossible for the two to stay 
apart; and during the period of Jackson’s supremacy, 
1829-1841, Benton supported all of the President’s 
policies (see Jackson, Andrew). 

Benton was always an advocate of the interests of 
the West, urging a liberal land policy and the con¬ 
struction of transcontinental railways, saying: “ There 
is the East; there is the road to India.” But when the 
slavery question became dominant, he sacrificed his 
political career to uphold the cause of the Union. 
After 30 years in the Senate he was defeated for re- 
election in 1850 because of his opposition to the 
Compromise of that year. He was subsequently 
elected for one brief term to the national House of 
Representatives; but the southern sentiment was too 
strong in Missouri, and in 1854 his political career 
came finally to an end. He devoted the remainder of 
his life to writing his ‘Thirty Years of Congress,’ and 
arranging for publication the debates of Congress 
down to 1850. 

Although Benton died before the Civil War began, 
his influence played a part in keeping Missouri in the 
Union in the critical days of 1861. His words to Cal¬ 
houn were frequently recalled: “I shall be found in 
the right place—on the side of my country and the 
Union!” 

Ben zol. One of the first products of the distilla¬ 
tion of coal-tar is the colorless liquid known as benzol. 
It forms a great many compounds with other sub¬ 
stances and hence is very important in commercial 
chemistry. Many drugs and dyes, including aniline 
dyes, may be made from it as a starting point. One 
great branch of organic chemistry is concerned with 
the “aromatic hydrocarbons,” which are derivatives 
of benzol. 

Benzol is lighter than water and does not mix with 
it or dissolve in it. It is poisonous and often produces 
illness and sometimes death among the workmen who 
breathe its vapor. It is very inflammable and burns 
with a luminous and smoky flame. The mixture of the 
vapor with the air makes an explosive gas. A pupil 
of the great chemist A. W. Hofmann, who first found 
benzol in coal-tar in 1845, lost his life in a benzol fire. 

The chemical formula for benzol is CsHs. It is also known 
as “benzene,” which must be distinguished from “benzine.” 
Benzine, too, is one of the products of distilling petroleum; it 
is like naphtha and gasoline, and is much used in the house¬ 
hold for cleansing, since it readily dissolves fats and oils. 
Like other petroleum products it is highly inflammable, and 
serious accidents are common as the result of using it near 
lighted lamps or cigars. (See Coal-Tar Products.) 

BEOWULF ( ba'o-wulf ). The ancestors of the English, 
like all primitive peoples, delighted in listening to 
their minstrels or poets, who sang of war and deeds 
of valor, of great heroes and chieftains. When these 
peoples left their homes on the continent and came to 
the British Isles, they brought with them songs relat¬ 


ing to the deeds of the hero Beowulf, and these were 
later woven together into the great Anglo-Saxon epic 
or heroic poem which bears his name. 

The poem tells how the “battle-brave” Beowulf 
came over the sea from Geatland (possibly the Sweden 
of today) to the land of the Danes and freed that 
country from the terrible ogre Grendel; how he was 
forced to battle with Grendel’s mother, who came to 
avenge her son’s death; and how, long afterwards, 
when Beowulf had been king of the Geatas for half a 
century, he came to his death in killing a fire-breathing 
dragon which had ravaged the land. Amid the 
mourning of his subjects the good king was buried 
under a great barrow or mound, while the warriors 
rode around it singing that he was— 

.... of kings, of men, 

The mildest and the kindest, and to all 
His people gentlest, yearning for their praise. 

Beowulf is the earliest English epic poem, and the 
language has undergone such changes since the time 
when it was written that only those who have studied 
the old Anglo-Saxon language can read the story in the 
original. It has been translated into modern English, 
however, and in this form may be read by any boy or 
girl who likes a story of heroism and adventure. 
Rude as the poem is, it is great because of its strength 
and vigor, its simple vivid pictures, and most of all 
because it is an expression of the manly and noble 
ideals which still hold sway over the English-speaking 
peoples. 

Scholars do not agree as to how old the epic is or 
when it was first put into writing, but the oldest form 
in which it has come down to us is in a manuscript 
written in the 10th century, and now preserved in the 
British Museum, London. 

BERING SEA. Both the sea and strait of this name 
were first discovered by a Russian Cossack, Deshnef, 
in 1648; but they were named in honor of Vitus Bering 
(or Behring), a Danish navigator in the employ of the 
Russian czar Peter the Great, who made the first 
systematic explorations during the years 1725 to 1741. 
Bering died in 1741 on an island near Kamchatka, 
which now bears his name. 

Bering Sea is part of the North Pacific Ocean, and 
is bordered by Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kam¬ 
chatka, and Siberia. It extends about 1,500 miles 
from east to west and about 1,000 miles from north 
to south; on the north it leads to the Arctic Ocean 
through Bering Strait. It is a sea of almost perpetual 
fogs, and for a large part of the year it is obstructed 
with ice in packs and floes. Navigation, however, is 
usually possible from June to November. Bering Sea 
receives several large rivers, including the Yukon from 
Alaska and the Anadir from Siberia. It is compara¬ 
tively shallow, being not more than 600 feet in the 
northern part. Bering Strait, lying between the pro¬ 
jecting peninsulas of Siberia and Alaska, is about 50 
miles wide and has an average depth of 200 feet. 

In 1881 the United States sought to declare Bering 
Sea a mare clausum or “closed sea,” open to naviga- 


F or any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

384 







BERLIN 


IN THE CAPITAL OF THE FORMER GERMAN EMPIRE 









ram* 


The high dome to the right 
marks the great Lutheran 
Cathedral. The long build¬ 
ing with the lower dome to 
the left is the former royal 
palace where Kaiser Wilhelm 
II and his family lived. Be¬ 
tween the Cathedral and the 
Palace, _ stretching away to 
the horizon, is the famous 
“Unter den Linden,” one of 
the handsomest streets in the 
world. 


(Reichstag) Buil'diBgl 


The National Gallery of 
Modern Painting and Sculp¬ 
ture is built in the style of a 
Greek temple, surrounded by 
colonnades. In the fore¬ 
ground is the Friedrich bridge 
over the Spree River which 
runs through the heart of the 
city. The photograph at the 
left shows the Reichstag 
building, with its huge glass 
dome, where the German par¬ 
liament sits. 




The Brandenburg Gate is at the 
end of Unter den Linden. It was 
designed in imitation of the 
Propy'aea at Athens. Over it is 
an image of Victory in a chariot 
drawnby four horses. The entire 
group is cast in copper. The 
Brandenburg Gate leads into 
the Tiergarten, one of the 
largest zoological parks in 
existence. To the right we 
see a section of the Berlin 
elevated railway. It is built 
on a series of masonry 
arches, beneath which shops 
and storehouses are fre¬ 
quently situated. 


Berlin’s early love for Greek 
architecture appears again in 
the Royal Theatre, built in 1821. 
This great marble structure 
is maintained by the govern¬ 
ment, as is also the Berlin 
opera house. The high-domed 
structure to the right is one of 
Berlin’s many churches. In¬ 
deed, this theatre is flanked on 
each side by a church, the cor¬ 
ner of the second one being just 
visible at the left. In the 
center of the theater square 
rises a beautiful national 
monument to the great poet 
Schiller, 19 feet high. 


tion and sealing only under conditions imposed by 
this country; but an international court of arbitration, 
held in 1893 to consider the sealing question, refused 
to recognize this claim. 

BERLIN, Germany. During the World War of 
1914-18 many an American “ doughboy” announced 
proudly when he left home that he was “on his way to 
Berlin,” and most of them were anxious to march 
through the streets of that German capital with their 
victorious allies before they returned to civil life. 
This wish was destined to be ungratified, for Berlin 


lies far beyond the zone of “occupied” German terri¬ 
tory given over to the armies of the Allies by the 
armistice of Nov. 11, 1918. 

Situated on the Spree River in the former kingdom 
of Prussia, almost equidistant from the northern and 
southern and from the eastern and western boundaries 
of Germany, Berlin is admirably located for the 
political center of the country. Its accessibility is 
increased by the great network of railways which con¬ 
verge upon it. This rail communication with all parts 
of Europe aided in making Berlin before the World 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

385 
















BERLIN 



War one of the greatest industrial and commercial 
cities on the continent, while in wealth and population 
it ranked third in Europe, immediately after London 
and Paris. In it were great factories for the making 
of woolen cloth, dyes, furniture, railway supplies, 
machinery, and steam engines, which employed more 
than one-half the working population. 

In spite of its age—for it was probably founded in 
the 13th century—Berlin is a very modern city. In 
1871, when the German Empire was formed, Berlin 
had a population of 826,000 inhabitants; at the time 
of the World War, in 1914, it had grown to a city of 
nearly 4,000,000 inhabitants, including suburbs—one 
of the most amazing growths in history. The appear¬ 
ance of the city, too, is modern, with its imposing 
buildings and wide avenues. Its most famous street 
is “Unter den Linden”—so called from its long rows 
of lime or linden trees, which lead from the former 
imperial palace, with its 600 rooms, to the Branden¬ 
burg Gate, the only one remaining of the numerous 
gates of the old Prussian city. Surmounting this gate 
is the famous bronze Car of Victory, which was carried 
to Paris by Napoleon in 1807, but was returned to its 
former position when that disturber of the peace was 
banished to St. Helena. Unter den Linden was the 
political and social center of the empire. Along it are 
situated the University of Berlin, the palace of the 
imperial chancellor, the palaces of the emperors 
William I and Frederick III, the French and Russian 
embassies, and the royal library. The university, 
although not founded until 1810, is the center of the 
learning of Germany, and has on its teaching staff the 
foremost men of German letters and science. Else¬ 
where are the Reichstag building, the Royal Theater, 
and a number of other theaters and opera houses, 
and numerous museums and palaces. 

With Prussian thoroughness the rulers of Berlin saw 
to it that the people should hold in grateful remem¬ 
brance those who have contributed to the growth of 
the city and the Prussian state. Her streets and 
parks, therefore, are dotted with pretentious statues 
erected to the memory of rulers and generals. Among 
these of course the Hohenzollern rulers, who since the 
15th century made Berlin the seat of government for 
the mark of Brandenburg, held first place. When 
Brandenburg grew into Prussia, Berlin remained the 
capital; and when Prussia expanded into the German 
Empire in 1871, that city became the imperial capital. 
Although the statues of war leaders predominate, 
those erected to Rauch, Hegel, Schiller, and Jahn show 
that the leaders in peaceful pursuits have not been 
entirely forgotten. 

Like other German cities, Berlin was impoverished 
during the World War by the blockade which cut off 
its trade, and it suffered severely from the riots which 
accompanied and followed the revolution of 1919. 
Although no longer the home of the Hohenzollerns, it 
remains the chief city and capital of the German 
Republic, as it was of the empire. Population of 
Berlin proper, excluding suburbs, about 1,900,000. 


B ER N | 

BERMUDAS. Two days’ steaming southeast from 
New York brings you to the delightful group of 
coral islands called the Bermudas. Frosts are un¬ 
known, the winter temperature ranging between 50 
and 70 degrees, so the luxuriant vegetation is green 
the year around. Every winter brings tens of thou¬ 
sands of tourists from the United States and England. 

Only 20 of the islands are inhabited, though there 
are about 350 islands, islets, and reefs in all, with an 
area of about 19 square miles. Bermuda Island, 
which occupies about three-fourths of the total area 
of the group, is connected by causeways and bridges 
with some of the smaller islands. Its chief town, 
Hamilton (population, about 2,600), is the seat of the 
government, which is in the hands of a governor and 
a council of six members, appointed by the British 
government, and an elected assembly. 

The Bermudas are strategically valuable to Great 
Britain as a naval base half-way between Canada and 
the West Indies, and have risen in importance since 
the opening of the Panama Canal. St. George’s 
Island has a strongly fortified harbor and there are 
extensive naval establishments on Ireland Island, with 
dockyards and a large floating dock. Most of the 
trade is with the United States and Canada. The 
absence of frosts permits winter planting, and Ber¬ 
muda early potatoes, onions, and other garden 
vegetables bring high prices at New York. A large 
proportion of the Easter lilies sold in the United 
States are grown in Bermuda, and the fields where 
these grow are one of the sights. 

The islands get their name from the Spaniard Juan 
Bermudez, who discovered them in 1515. They are 
also sometimes called the Somers Islands, from Sir 
George Somers, who first settled them early in the 
17th century. Population, about 22,000, of whom 
about one-third are whites. 

BERN, Switzerland. As the sun sinks into the 
golden west at Bern, the fortunate visitor beholds to 
the eastward one of the most splendid sunset spec¬ 
tacles in nature. For there, where rise the snow¬ 
capped peaks of the Bernese Alps, 20 to 30 miles away, 
the magic of the Alpine glow creates wonderful towers 
and pinnacles and minareted cities of exquisite rose 
and gold and violet, as glorious as a saint’s dreams of 
Paradise and as evanescent as the colors of the dying 
dolphin. 

This capital city of the Swiss confederation lies in 
western Switzerland, on a plateau around whose base 
flows the River Aar, one of the upper tributaries of 
the Rhine. The city’s name comes from the German 
word Baern meaning “bears,” and was adopted, ac¬ 
cording to legend, because of the great number of 
bears that were killed there the day the city was 
founded. The bear is the heraldic emblem of Bern, 
and bears in wood and stone are used everywhere as 
decorations for the buildings. There is a curious old 
town clock which heralds the striking of the hours by 
the crowing of a cock and a procession of tiny bears. 
The city maintains a bears’ den on the right bank of 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

386 







the Aar, in which there are always a number of fat 
sleek bears. 

The Aar flows completely around the old town, 
except for a narrow neck to the west. The streets of 
the city are straight for the most part and dotted with 
fountains. Among the public buildings are a great 
cathedral begun in 1421 and not completed until 1894. 
The Council building ( Rathaus ) is another building 
dating from the Middle Ages. The Parliament house, 
in which are held the sessions of Federal Congress of 
the confederation, commands a splendid view of the 
Alps. The city is a great industrial center, noted for 
its manufacture of woolens, linens, cottons, silk stuffs, 
watches, clocks, toys, scientific instruments, and 
chocolate. 

Bern was founded in 1191, and entered the Swiss 
Confederacy in 1353. In 1405 the greater part of the 
city was destroyed by fire, but it was afterwards 
rebuilt. Bern became the capital of Switzerland in 
1848. Population, about 112,000. 

Betel. A preparation of the nuts of the betel 
palm (Areca catechu) has been the “chewing-gum” of 
the people of the Orient for at least 2,500 years. 
Nearly one-tenth of the human family practice betel 
chewing and in the East Indies, where this drug habit 
is most general, nearly every native man and woman, 
young and old, carries a betel box. 

The kernel of the nuts, which are about the size of 
a small hen’s egg, is prepared by boiling, drying, and 
slicing. A small piece is placed on the leathery leaf 
of a vine belonging to the pepper family (called “betel 


vine”), together with a bit of quicklime, and the whole 
is rolled into a pellet. When chewed the pellets have 
a sharp, stinging, peppery taste, color the saliva brick 
red, stain the gums and lips, and blacken the teeth. 
Many betel chewers are toothless at the age of 
twenty-five. In India the betel chew is usually called 
'pawn. 

BETHLEHEM. At the foot of a hill in Palestine 
thickly covered with vines and olive trees, slumbers 
the peaceful little town of Bethlehem, which shares 
with its near neighbor Jerusalem the distinction of 
being the most sacred spot in Christendom. At the 
end of its long straggling street, lined with low, flat- 
roofed houses, is the shrine to which millions of pil¬ 
grims have turned their steps—the magnificent 
Church of the Nativity erected, in 327, over the grotto 
where Christ is believed to have been born. The 
nave of this beautiful and interesting church which 
monarchs have vied in adorning is said to be the 
oldest monument of Christian architecture in the 
world. In the grotto below, a marble trough marks 
the traditional spot where the manger-cradle stood. 
A famous altar, called the Altar of the Innocents, 
marks the reputed burial place of the 2,000 children 
who, according to the New Testament account, were 
slain by Herod. 

But even before the birth of Christ, Bethlehem was 
a place of great fame, for it was the scene of the 
romance of Ruth and of the death of Rachel. It was 
also the birthplace of David, and in it he was anointed 
king by Saul. Population, about 8,000. 


The BIBLE, the WORLD’S BOOK of BOOKS 

How the Marvelous Jewish and Christian Scriptures Have Come to Us 
Across the Centuries and , Though Written in Ancient Tongues , 

Still Speak to All the Language of the Soul 



T> IBLE. In a narrow 
^ cell in a monastery 
of England, nearly 
1,200 years ago, lay the 
Venerable Bede, the 
most famous scholar of 
his day in Western 
Europe. Feebly he 
dictated his transla¬ 
tion of St. John’s Gos¬ 
pel, for although 
desperately ill he 
would not rest from 
his labors. 

“ Go on quickly,” 
he commanded the 
scribe. “I know not 
how long I shall hold out or how soon my Master 
will call me hence.” All day long they worked, 
and when the rays of the setting sun glided into the 
quiet room, the task was almost done. 


“There remains but 
one chapter, master,” 
said the anxious 
scribe. ‘‘ Will you not 
rest now?” 

“Nay, we must go 
on,” Bede replied. 
“Take up thy pen 
again and I will 
translate.” 

His eyes blinded 
with tears, the young 
scribe wrote on. “And 
now, father,” said he, 
as he set down the 
last sentence from the 
quivering lips, “it is 

“Ay, it is finished,” echoed the dying Bede. And 
turning his face to the window where he had so long 
worked and prayed, he died. 


The Venerable Bede Dictating the Last Words of St. John’s Gospel to 
the Young Scribe. 

finished.” 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 

387 


at the end of t hit 


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The Bible’s Place in Literature 


ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BOOK OF BOOKS 






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On the left is a piece of papyrus containing part of the Twelfth Psalm in Greek translation, one of the earliest existing manuscripts 
of any portion of the Bible. On the right is a leaf from a Greek parchment of the Bible, of the 3d century; it was discovered in a 
monastery on Mt. Sinai in 1843. Most of this particular manuscript is now in a library in Petrograd. 


This saintly scholar is only one of the many great 
men who have given their lives that the world might 
have the Bible, the sacred book of Christianity. This 
great book has woven itself into the very life of the 
Christian peoples. Translated into Latin, its lessons 
were the basis of all the church services of the Mid¬ 
dle Ages. That its message might be available for 
the heathen Teutons and Slavs, Ulfilas devised the 
Gothic alphabet and Cyril the Russian. An English 
translation of the Bible was the chief treasure of that 
little band of Puritans who set sail for America to 
find “freedom to worship God” in their own way. It 
has been on every battlefield since the printing press 
made it available to all. Explorers have carried it 
into the frozen North and into the heart of the 
tropical jungles for consolation on their hard journeys; 
and missionaries, many times at the cost of their 
lives, have brought its message to heathen lands. 

The Book that is Really a Library 
But the Bible is more than our great sacred book; 
it is also our greatest literary heritage. There is no 
other book worded with more haunting beauty than 
our English Bible. Merely as literature, it has made 
a deeper impression upon the human mind than has 
any other book, and the extent to which it has helped 
shape the world’s ideas cannot be estimated. No 
matter how much you may know of poetry and prose, 
you cannot consider yourself well read unless you are 
thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. It is a library 
rather than a book, for it is a collection of 66 books, 
each distinct in itself, abounding in literature of the 
highest type. Almost every phase of life and thought 
is dealt with, and every form of literature is included 
in its pages—stories, biographies, letters, orations, 
prayers, hymns of praise and thanksgiving, fierce war 
songs, tender love lyrics, fables, proverbs, epigrams, 


genealogies, and chronologies. The vigor and dra¬ 
matic force, the beauty and grandeur, of some of these 
books have not been excelled in any other writing. 

The Bible has two great divisions, the Old and the 
New Testament. Testament means “covenant” or 
mutual understanding—a covenant between God and 
His people. 

The Old Testament and the New 

The Old Testament is the record of the history and 
religious literature of a little band of people, the Jews, 
who believed in one God who was loving and just. 
All about the little country of Palestine were great and 
powerful nations, who worshiped many gods, but 
Israel held fast to its monotheistic belief. In the 
New Testament is the story of the life of Jesus and 
his teachings, and the acts and epistles of the Apostles. 
All through the Old Testament are promises that God 
would give His people a deliverer; and these promises, 
which Christianity teaches were fulfilled in the life 
and death of Jesus, give the thread of unity binding 
the Old Testament to the New. 

One of the most wonderful things about this 
wonderful book is the way it has been preserved 
through the ages, and the way its narratives are sup¬ 
plemented by the records of the mighty empires 
which surrounded the little country of Palestine— 
Babylonia, Assyria, the Persians, the Hittites, and 
the Egyptians. 

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew (except 
for a few passages in the related Aramaic dialect), 
and the New Testament in a popular form of Greek 
and in Aramaic. Into every country where Christian¬ 
ity spread, the Bible was translated into the language 
of that country—first into various Eastern dialects, 
then into Latin, the language of the Romans, and 
then into the languages of Western Europe. No 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 

388 


place 


see information 












other book has been translated into so many lan¬ 
guages. The whole of it has been translated into 108 
languages, and parts of it into more than 500. The 
greatest of the early 
translations was that 
into Latin made by 
St. Jerome, who lived 
about 400 years after 
Christ. This transla¬ 
tion, known as the 
Vulgate, is today the 
official Bible of the 
Roman Catholic 
Church throughout 
the world. It was 
also the basis of the 
earlier translations 
into English and other 
European tongues, 
and of the Douai 
English translation 
which is used by 
English-speaking 
Catholics. It is an 
interesting commen¬ 
tary on the interest 
taken in the Bible 
that when printing 
was invented in the 
15th century, the 
Latin Bible was the 
first complete book 
printed. 

Parts of the Bible 
were early translated 
into English. The 
first writer to do this was Caedmon, though it is 
true he did not translate the Bible at all in the 
usual sense, but sang its divine stories so the igno¬ 
rant people of his time could understand them 
(see Caedmon). Other translators, including Bede, 
gave the peoples of England fragments of the scrip¬ 
tures in their own tongue, but it was not until the 
year 1382 that the whole Bible was translated into 
English. 

Famous Translations of the Bible 

This first English Bible, translated from the 
Latin Vulgate (1382) and copied out by hand, is 
considered by many to be the work of the group of 
early reformers headed by John Wyclif and bears 
his name. Great opposition arose to it because its 
authors were “ heretics” and translated many pas¬ 
sages in a sense not approved by the church. Never¬ 
theless, it was so widely circulated that, in spite of 
the fact that its reading was prohibited by law, there 
are more than 100 manuscript copies of it preserved 
today. 

William Tyndale, who was born a hundred years 
after Wyclif’s death, went back to the original 
Hebrew and Greek versions, and his translation of 


BIBLE( 

many passages is so good that much of it is preserved 
in the English Bible of today. But Tyndale too was 
a “heretic,” and when the first of his books reached 

England from the 
Continent they were 
burned as “pernicious 
merchandise.” The 
new art of printing, 
however, spread his 
Bible far and wide. 
In the end Tyndale 
was condemned as a 
heretic on the Conti¬ 
nent and he became 
one of the martyrs for 
the Protestant faith. 

Miles Coverdale’s 
Bible (authorized in 
1535) was founded in 
part on Tyndale’s 
translation; while the 
“Great Bible,” 
ordered by Henry 
VIII in 1539 to be 
placed in all the 
churches, was partly 
based on Coverdale 
and partly on the 
work of John Rogers, 
later a martyr. 

When James I came 
tothe throne, the Ref¬ 
ormation had been 
established in Great 
Britain and the 
church services were 
all in English. He desired an English Bible more 
perfect than any then existing, so he instructed 
47 biblical scholars to prepare a new translation. 
The result of their labors was the King James 
Version, published in 1611, which has been for 300 
years the “authorized version” of the Protestant 
English-speaking people. It is the greatest book in 
the English language. “Its simple majestic Anglo- 
Saxon tongue,” says one writer, “its clear sparkling 
style, its directness and force of utterance, have made 
it the model in language, style, and dignity of some of 
the choicest writers of the last two centuries, and 
its reverential and spiritual tone and attitude have 
made it the idol of the Christian church and endeared 
it to the hearts of millions of men and women.” 

For English speaking Catholics a similar place is 
held by the Douai Version. This was first produced 
at the University of Douai, in France, by Catholic 
refugees from England in Elizabeth’s day. Dr. 
Gregory Martin, formerly of Oxford, played the chief 
part in the translation, which was revised by William 
Allen and others. The New Testament was pub¬ 
lished in 1582, and the whole Bible in two volumes in 
1609 and 1610. 


A HEBREW SCHOLAR READING FROM A SCROLL 



Seated with a scroll before him, this venerable old man with the white 
beard is studying in the original Hebrew the faith of his fathers as re¬ 
corded in the Old Testament. The scroll is unrolled with one hand as he 
follows it page by page, and rolled up with the other. 


containedin the Easy 


Reference Fact-index at 

389 


the end of this 


work 









BIBLE 


The Oldest Manuscripts’! 


The Revised Version, made desirable by the dis¬ 
covery of new manuscripts, was published in 1881 by 
a committee of English scholars cooperating with a 
similar committee appointed in the United States. 
Its translations 
are more accurate, 
but it lacks the 
beauty of language 
of the King James 
(or Authorized) 

Version. 

In the early Christ¬ 
ian Churches,— at 
Ephesus, Jerusalem, or 
Rome — say 50 years 
after the death of 
Jesus, the church ser¬ 
vices were secret 
because the Christian 
worship was forbidden 
by the law of the 
Roman Empire. After 
preliminary prayers 
and singing, amid a 
rustle of anticipation, 
the leader would turn 
to a great chest hung 
with silken curtains. 

Many scrolls of writ¬ 
ings were in this chest, 
among them the sacred 
writings of the Jews, 
copies of letters from 
Fathers of the new 
church, and writings of Christ’s own Apostles. If we 
could understand the ancient language, the passages read 
would all sound very familiar to us, for we have heard 
them over and over again in our churches and Sunday- 
schools. These scrolls or biblia, which is the Greek word 
for “books,” have almost all been lost for hundreds of years. 
But before they were lost or destroyed, copies and transla¬ 
tions were made of them, and from these was put together 
our Bible of today. 

Establishing the “Canon” 

The Old Testament as we know it is by no means the 
whole of the sacred writings of the Jewish people. It was 
not until 200 years after Christianity 1- had been founded that 
the rabbis and teachers of the Jews finally decided which of 
their books should be regarded as “canonical” in the Jewish 
church. “Canon” moans literally a rule or measure, and 
applied to the Bible it means a list of books which were 
accepted as inspired. These “canonical scriptures” of the 
Jews became the Old Testament of the Christians. But the 
early Christian church put 14 of these rejected books in a 
separate group at the end of the Old Testament. These 
we call the Apocrypha —the Greek word for “hidden,” or 
the “hidden books.” The Roman Catholic church still uses 
these Apocryphal books, but the Protestant churches do not 
recognize them. They include the books of Tobit, Judith, 
the remainder of Esther, the remainder of Daniel, the Wis¬ 
dom of Solomon, Ecclcsiasticus (called ‘The Wisdom of 
Jesus, the son of Sirach’), Baruch, I and II Maccabees. All 
the leading English translations down to the King James 
Version included these books, and the scholars who gave us 
the Revised Version revised these books with the rest, 
although they were published in a separate volume. Some 
of the passages are equal in nobility to passages from the 
books included as inspired. Examples are: “Truth abideth 
and is strong forever; she liveth and conquereth forever¬ 
more” (I Esdras). “The souls of the righteous are in the 
hands of God .... in the eyes of the unwise they seem 
to perish, but they are in happiness” (Tobit). 


Similarly there was for a long time a differance of opinion 
as to what books should be included in the New Testament. 
There are no less than 109 of the New Testament apocryphal 
books, whose very names are unfamiliar to most Christians 
today; examples are the Epistle of Barnabas, the Teaching 

of the Twelve Apos¬ 
tles, and the Shepherd 
of Hernias. The canon 
of the New Testament 
was not decided until 
382 a.d. at a council 
of the church held at 
Rome. 

The oldest manu¬ 
scripts of the collected 
books of the Bible go 
back only to about 
350 a.d. There are 
only a few of these 
and they are carefully 
guarded in libraries 
and museums. The 
oldest one of which 
we know is the Vati¬ 
can manuscript, kept 
in the Vatican Library 
at Rome, which con¬ 
tains almost the whole 
of the New Testa¬ 
ment. The Sinai tic 
manuscript, dis¬ 
covered in St. Cath¬ 
erine’s convent at the 
foot of Mt. Sinai 
about 70 years ago, is 
in the library at 
Petrograd. It is also 
very old, and contains the complete New Testament. The 
Alexandrine manuscript, written after 400 a.d., was presented 
to King Charles I of England and is now in the British Museum; 
it contains the greater part of both the Old and New Testa¬ 
ments. Some of these old manuscripts are called “palimp¬ 
sests,” owing to the fact that the original writing on the 
parchment sheets was erased to make room for later writing. 
Means have been found, however, to restorethe old letters so 
that they show faintly through the lines of the later writing. 

The New Testament was written in Greek. There are 
nearly 2,000 ancient manuscripts of the whole or different 
parts of the New Testament written in this language, but 
none is older than the manuscripts described above. In the 
past 30 years, however, in excavations made in Egypt, there 
have been found several pages containing “sayings of Jesus,” 
which are probably a full century or more older than the 
oldest New Testament manuscripts we have. These price¬ 
less fragments of waste paper found in the shifting sands at 
the edge of an Egyptian town contain some teachings of the 
Master which are not recorded in the books of the New 
Testament as they later took shape. 

The work of comparing such early manuscripts and 
correcting the text and revising the translation has gone on 
from early days. When the Temple at Jerusalem was 
burned in 70 a.d. much of the sacred literature of the Jews 
was lost; but a school of rabbis was formed at Tiberias to 
restore it. Alexandria in Egypt early became a center for 
the study of the Christian writings. All through the Middle 
Ages patient monks busied themselves with the labor of 
copying and so preserving the sacred texts. And with the 
publication of the printed Greek text of the New Testament 
by Erasmus in 1516, and by the Spanish cardinal Ximenes 
in 1522, the modern study of the Bible began. 

Some Notable Bibles 

One of the most beautiful of the Bible manuscripts in 
existence is a translation into Gothic by Ulfilas, the mission¬ 
ary to the Goths, which is now preserved in Upsala, Sweden. 
It has silver letters on purple vellum. 


READING THE “GREAT BIBLE” IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL 



This scene takes us back to 1540, when the new English translation of the Bible 
made by Miles Coverdale at the direction of Archbishop Cranmer and Lord 
Thomas Cromwell, and issued under the authority of King Henry VIII, was 
ordered placed in all the churches of England. The picture shows the eagerness 
with which the people availed themselves of the privilege to read and interpret 
the Bible for themselves. 


For any s u bj e c t not found in its alphabetical place see information 

390 











BICYCLES AND MOTORCYCLES 




Some Curious Bibles 



The “Mazarin Bible” was the first complete book printed 
from movable types (1452-56). It is so named because the 
first copy discovered was found among the books of Cardinal 
Mazarin of France. 

The ‘‘Complutensian Polyglot,” published by Cardinal 
Ximenes in 1522, prints the Greek of the New Testament in 
one column and the Latin of the Vulgate in the other. For 
the Old Testament it gives the Hebrew on one side, an old 
Greek translation (called the Septuagint) on the other, and 
the Latin Vulgate between—“like Christ crucified between 
the two thieves,” so the pref¬ 
ace says. 

The “Bug Bible” (1551) was 
so called because of the transla¬ 
tion of Psalms xci, 5, which read, 

“afraid of bugs by night,” in¬ 
stead of our present reading, 

“terror by night.” 

The “Breeches Bible” is an 
English version published at 
Geneva in 1560, and is named 
from its translation of Gen. iii, 

7, which reads, “making them¬ 
selves breeches out of fig leaves.” 

The “Wicked Bible,” printed 
in England in 1631, left out 
the word “not” in the Seventh Commandment. For this 
error the printer was fined the equivalent of $1,500. 

The “Thumb Bible,” published in 1670 at Aberdeen 
(Scotland), was one inch square and one-half inch thick. 

The “Vinegar Bible” (1717) has as the heading of the 
20th chapter of Luke “The Parable of the Vinegar,” instead 
of "vineyard.” 

The “Devil’s Bible” is the name given a manuscript of 
the Bible taken to Stockholm after the Thirty Years’ War. 
It is beautifully written on 300 asses’ skins, and legend says 
it is the work of a monk condemned to death, who by selling 
himself to Satan was enabled to save his life by meeting 
the condition that he should copy the whole Bible on asses’ 
skins in one night. 

The Caxton Memorial Bible was wholly printed and 
bound in 12 hours, in 1877, to celebrate the 400th anniver¬ 
sary of the introduction of printing into Egnland. 

One of the smallest bibles in the world was printed in 
Glasgow in 1901. Without the cover it is 1J4 by \% inches, 
and seven-sixteenths of an inch thick, containing 876 pages 
and several illustrations. It is provided with a small magni¬ 
fying glass which slips into a pocket in the cover. 



This is the little Bible referred to in the text. It measures 
without the cover, 1J4 inches by 1 % inches, but you can 
read it very plainly by using the magnifying glass. 


Bicycles and motorcycles. The story of the 
two-wheeled “cycle” should perhaps begin in ancient 
Egyptian and classical times, for some use was made 
even then of a device which was simply two wheels, 
one behind the other, connected by a bar of wood. 
But the title “father of the bicycle” is usually given 
to a German, Karl von Drais, who in 1816 invented a 
“velocipede” of the type in which the rider rested his 
weight upon the frame and moved by kicking the 
ground with his feet, enjoying speed only when coast¬ 
ing down hill. Not until 1865, however, and in France, 
was the crank-driven velocipede invented; and to 
England, in 1869, belongs the credit of producing the 
first steel-rimmed, solid rubber-tired contrivance— 
now definitely named “ bicycle”—which superseded 
the old wooden frame and iron-tired “bone-shakers” 
of the earlier days. 

In the early bicycles the pedal operated directly on 
the front wheel, and so to gain speed the front wheel 
was for a time made enormously large, while the back 
wheel became simply a small steering wheel. In the 


early ’80’s the front wheel was 60 inches and even 64 
inches high. These wheels were very difficult to 
mount and required much skill to prevent the rider 
from taking dangerous “headers” from his elevated 
position. The so-called “star” bicycle with the little 
wheel in front, which was introduced in 1880, was 
only a slight improvement over this type. 

Two inventions especially made the bicycle what it 

is today—the easy-riding 
pneumatic tires, and the low- 
hung “safety” frame, with 
wheels of equal size trans¬ 
mitting power from the 
pedal to the rear wheel by 
means of a ratchet and 
chain. Ball bearings, the 
spring saddle, and other 
improvements followed 
rapidly, and in time the 
price was cut from the $100 
and $125 of the ’90’s to 
about half those amounts. Then the bicycle became 
a truly popular and useful means of travel and 
recreation. “Cycling clubs” were organized and long 
tours were often made on the bicycle, bicycle-riding 
reaching the height of its popularity in the United 
States about 1895. While it is no longer so popular 
a sport, there is a steady demand for the wheel for 
everyday use, for delivering packages, for messengers 
and policemen, for use in the army, and for similar 
purposes. 

Although the automobile has superseded the bicycle 
in many of its uses, it has also given it a new lease of 
life by suggesting its transformation into the “motor¬ 
cycle.” The motorcycle, which was first perfected in 
1900, is merely the bicycle made heavier and equipped 
with a small gasoline motor. Like the automobile, 
the motorcycle has a gasoline tank, oil tank, clutch, 
starter, magneto, carbureter, spark and gas control, 
muffler, etc. (see Automobile). The first machines 
were equipped with a one-cylinder motor, but they 
now have two- and even four-cylinder motors. There 
are about 50 different makes in America and Canada. 
The motorcycle is used for many important purposes. 
Police are mounted on them for special duty in many 
cities, dispatch carriers in the army are equipped with 
motorcycles, and they serve many purposes in busi¬ 
ness. Often they are equipped with a side-car for an 
extra passenger or for delivery of goods; and improve¬ 
ments in their manufacture have added speed and made 
them more comfortable and better adapted for long¬ 
distance service. Bicycle and motorcycle races are 
popular, but motorcycle racing on the regular curved 
track often results in serious injury to the rider. 

The “motor wheel” is a later adaptation of motor 
power to the bicycle which equips the ordinary bicycle 
with a small detachable gasoline motor. The opera¬ 
tion of such a light motor machine is limited to use on 
smooth pavements, but it has proved a practicable 
means of travel in cities. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

391 





BIGHORN 


BILLIARDS 



Bighorn. In the early days the wild sheep called 
the bighorn or Rocky Mountain sheep ranged 
throughout the whole western mountain system of 
North America, from Alaska to New Mexico. They 
are becoming rare, but may still be found in the rocky 
plateaus of the Bad Lands 
of Dakota, and in greater 
numbers about the head¬ 
waters of the Yellowstone 
and thence northward. 

The massive circling 
horns of the male, which 
give the animal its name, 
are coveted as trophies, 
and much skill and 
patience on the part of 
the hunter are needed to 
capture this wonderfully 
swift, agile, and tireless 
animal. Its flesh is gen¬ 
erally considered to be 
the best of all western 
game. In most states, 
the bighorn is now pro¬ 
tected by game laws. 

The color is tawny yellow 
in summer, changing to 
grayish-brown in winter. 

It is a sturdily built 
sheep, about 40 inches 
in height and sometimes 
weighing as much as 300 
pounds. The horns often 
measure 42 inches or 
more in total length. 

The bighorn must not be 
confused with the Rocky 
Mountain goat, or white 
goat, which is an entirely 
different animal. Scientific 
name of the bighorn, Ovis 
cervina. 

Billiards. No other 
game in the world requires such delicacy of touch, 
steadiness of hand, accuracy of eye, and iron self- 
control as the ancient game of billiards. Long 
practice enables the skilful player to control the 
motions of the balls with an accuracy that seems 
almost miraculous to the beginner. In fact, the 
really expert can do feats so far out of the ordinary 
man’s reach that the English philosopher Herbert 
Spencer once remarked that to play billiards well was 
the mark of an ill-spent youth. Spencer enjoyed 
the game thoroughly, however, and was accustomed 
to relax his mind after a morning of hard work by 
an hour of billiards at his club. 

The game has been played in many different ways 
at various times, and even today there are marked 
differences between the English, French, and Ameri¬ 
can games. In America billiards is played on a table 
usually ten feet long and half as wide, having a very 


smooth and level surface of slate covered with green 
baize. Around the edge of the table is a beveled rail 
cushioned with rubber, from which the balls rebound 
lightly and easily. Three ivory balls 2 % inches in 
diameter are used, one of which is red and the other 
two white. One of the 
white balls is distin¬ 
guished by a tiny black 
spot. Each player 
chooses one of these white 
balls as his “cue” ball. 
This cue ball is driven by 
a cue, a leather-tipped 
wooden rod a little less 
than five feet long and 
varying in diameter from 
half an inch or less at the 
point to an inch or an 
inch and a half at the 
butt. Chalk is rubbed 
on the leather tip every 
few turns to make greater 
friction between cue and 
ball, thereby better 
control. 

With the fingers of one 
hand the player holds 
the butt of his cue firmly 
but lightly; the other 
hand he places on the 
table so that the fore¬ 
finger and thumb support 
and guide the forward 
part of the cue. The cue 
ball is struck with the 
point of the cue in such 
a way as to cause it to 
touch first one and then 
the other of the two 
remaining balls, thus 
making a “carom” or 
* ‘ billiard. ’ ’ Each billiard 
counts one point in the score. By directing the point 
of the cue against a part of the cue ball to one side 
or above or below its center, it is possible to “put 
English” on the ball; that is, to make it twist or 
curve and thus make shots otherwise impossible. 

One very effective way to score many points with¬ 
out missing is to “nurse” the balls; that is, to get 
them in a corner or along the rail and by hitting 
them very lightly hold them in one place for a long 
time. This easy way of running up a large score is 
made impossible in many professional games by 
marking “balk lines” 14, 18, or 22 inches in from the 
edges of the table, and by making the rule that either 
every second or every third shot must be hard enough 
to send at least one of the balls outside the marked 
square in which the balls are grouped when the shot 
begins. Any number of caroms are allowed in the 
square left in the center of the table. 


BIGHORNS AT HOME 


m 



One habit of the Bighorns is to post sentinels. That magnificent 
creature in the rear seems to be on sentinel duty. In summer 
the Bighorns climb to the most inaccessible crags, feeling per¬ 
fectly at home on dizzy heights where men could scarcely get a 
foothold. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

392 







BIOLOGY 


| BILL OF RIGHTS 



“Pocket billiards” or “pool” is quite a different 
game. It is played on a table that has pockets in 
each corner and two extra ones in the center of the 
longer sides. In “straight” pool, the most popular 
of the many pool games, 15 baUs and a cue ball are 
used. The players take turns using the same cue ball, 
the object being to put the 15 balls in any of the 
pockets. The player wins who pockets the greatest 
number. 

Recently there has been an effort to strip these 
games of their frequently evil associations. Billiard 
and pool tables are now found in most clubs, and in 
many social centers, Y.M.C.A. buildings, church 
recreation rooms, and in many homes of well-to-do 
Christian families. 

BILL OF RIGHTS. The idea of a bill of rights came 
from the English Bill of Rights passed by parliament 
in the year 1689. The first Bill of Rights was passed 
by the English parliament in 1689, when William and 
Mary were brought to the throne by the “Glorious 
Revolution.” It declared illegal the tyrannies of 
James II, and guaranteed to the people a fair trial in 
the courts, frequent meetings of parliament and free¬ 


dom of debate therein, freedom from taxation except 
by parliament, the right of petition, etc. Several of 
the first ten amendments to the constitution of the 
United States, including the one forbidding “ excessive 
bail” and “cruel and unusual punishments,” were 
taken almost word for word from this English Bill 
of Rights. 

Following the example of Virginia in 1776, most of 
the states of the Union today begin their constitutions 
with a bill of rights setting forth the rights which the 
state may not take from the individual. 

But the most important statement of such rights 
is the Declaration of the Rights of Man issued by the 
French Revolution in 1789. It laid down the prin¬ 
ciples of the freedom and equality under the law of 
all citizens and the sovereignty of the people, as well 
as the rights of the individual to freedom of speech, 
of religion, and of the press. It has well been said 
that it “laid down the principles of modern govern¬ 
ments.” This declaration soon passed beyond the 
frontiers of France and became an important factor 
in the growth of world democracy in the 19th and 
20th centuries. 


The WONDERFUL SCIENCE of LIVING THINGS 


JDlOLOGY. If a “man 
from Mars” were to 
come to the earth, he 
would be surprised at 
two things—at the amaz¬ 
ing wonder, beauty, in¬ 
terest, and variety of 
living things, with the 
“oneness” of all earthly 
life, and that so many 
people remain blind to 
the fascination of the 
living things which surround them. In the limits of 
this brief article, only some of the broader aspects of 
the science of living things can be considered. 

Biology, in brief, is “the science of life.” There are 
at least two million kinds of living things in the world. 
With all their irreconcilable contrasts—men, earth¬ 
worms, jellyfishes, oak trees, ferns, seaweeds—they 
yet possess many features in common. All life is 
fundamentally one. And so we have the common 
great science of biology, which deals especially with 
the far-reaching fundamental characters of living 
things. 

Of course this study is so vast that it is impossible 
for any one man to cover or master the whole field 
in detail. Consequently it is broken up into divi¬ 
sions, of which the primary ones are botany, the 
science of plant life, and zoology, the science of animal 
life; and each natural scientist further specializes in 
some narrower line, such as anatomy, physiology, 
embryology, genetics, or some other of a large num¬ 
ber of such fields. But there is still place for the 


TJOW amazing are the revelations of Biology, which 
-*■ teaches the “oneness” of Life—throughout all its 
more than 2,000,000 earthly forms—earthworms and jelly¬ 
fishes, apes and man, oak trees and seaweed! What 
magic there is in the stuff “protoplasm” from which all 
living creatures are formed; how fascinating is the study 
of embryology and the laws of inheritance; and how 
startling it is to learn that “all the people in the world at 
any one time have had their heredity carried by a total 
of less than an ounce of matter!” Here are presented 
the chief facts of the science of Biology, with an indication 
of its chief lines of advance in the past hundred years. 


common science of biol¬ 
ogy, to take account 
of living things espe¬ 
cially in their larger rela¬ 
tions, and to correlate 
all of the many divisions 
of the subject. 

The modern science of 
biology differs from the 
old-time “natural his¬ 
tory” chiefly in that the 
latter was, in the main, 
a great accumulation of disconnected facts about 
plants and animals. Biology, on the other hand, 
takes account of the detailed facts mainly as they 
illustrate the principles and laws that govern life. 
At present the term natural history is customarily 
used to apply especially to the out-of-doors study 
of the habitats, habits, modes of life, seasons, 
and activities of living things, both plants and 
animals. While this outside study of living things 
has its wonderful fascinations, the same is true also 
of the other phases of their study; but these take 
more patience, serious study, and often the use of 
the microscope and other facilities. 

Common forms of life, of course, are easily divided 
into the two great types—plants and animals—with 
clear distinguishing characters for each. At the 
bottom of the scale of life, however, the plant and 
animal kingdoms converge, and there are some simple 
microscopic forms which are not clearly one or the 
other, but possess some characters of each. And so 
it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the plant 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

393 







[biology 

and animal kingdoms. But between clear-cut plants 
and animals, the following are the main differences: 

Green plants are able, in the presence of sunlight, 
by means of their green chlorophyll, to utilize salts 
and water drawn from the soil, and carbonic acid ob¬ 
tained from the air, in building up their own substance. 
This cannot be 
done by man 
artificially, or by 
animals naturally. 

In this way green 
plants furnish the 
fundamental food 
supply, not only 
for all animal life 
in the world, but 
also for the color¬ 
less fungus plants 
such as mush¬ 
rooms and molds. 

In this wonderful 
work the green 
chlorophyll is the 
“machine” that 
does the work; the 
sun’s rays furnish 
the radiant energy 
that is transformed 
into chemically 
stored energy in 
the form of starch, 
sugar, and the 
other energy- 
yielding foods of 
man and all other 
animals. Less im¬ 
portant differences 
are: The cells of 
plants have walls 
of woody material, 
of animals not. 

Plants are usually stationary; most animals move 
freely from place to place. Most animals have a 
nervous system and sense organs. 

The Stuff that All Life is Made Of 

But with all these differences, it still remains true 
that both types of living things possess the main 
fundamental characters of life in common. In all 
organisms, the living substance is protoplasm (see 
Protoplasm). And while there must be infinite vari¬ 
ety of tissue, as found in different plants and animals 
and in different parts of the same plant or the same 
animal, protoplasm is the same fundamentally every¬ 
where, and differs only in details. It contains the 
same 12 chemical elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, 
hydrogen, sulphur, calcium, potassium, magnesium, 
iron, phosphorus, chlorine, and sodium), and contains 
none that are not common in nature everywhere. 
Protoplasm possesses everywhere the same general 
physiology; is sensitive to external conditions, such 


Chemistry of Plant Growth || 

as touch, temperature, chemical, etc.; there is some 
form of response, especially apparent in the motion 
of animals. All organisms utilize food and grow; 
possess respiration, the taking in of oxygen and giv¬ 
ing off of carbonic acid; and reproduce their kind in 
some form of reproduction. One of the most extraord¬ 
inary and import¬ 
ant resemblances is 
the striking and in¬ 
tricate method of 
cell division (see 
Cell). 

In viewing the 
life of the world, it 
is always fascinat¬ 
ing to think of the 
combination of 
the great number 
of conditions that 
are necessary to 
make life possible 
on earth — all of 
them necessary. 
One thinks first, 
perhaps, of the sun 
and its rays, bring- 
ing light and 
warmth, often for¬ 
getting that the 
sun is also the sole 
source of all the 
energy for plant 
growth and for 
the food supply for 
the wdiole living 
world. And so it 
was, through the 
many million years 
of the infinite 
past, while Nature 
was slowly and 
patientfy depositing the vast storehouses of energy in 
the form of coal, oil, and gas, for the uses of modern 
man—all derived from the remains of the plants and 
animals of the past! Vast quantities of water are also 
absolutely necessary. Water forms the larger part of 
protoplasm and is the universal solvent for the foods 
of both plants and animals. The water vapor of 
the atmosphere furnishes a blanket that helps to 
retain the heat from the sun. The vast reservoirs of 
the sea help to stabilize the temperature of the earth. 
An atmosphere of moderate temperature, with oxygen 
for respiration for all life and with carbonic acid for 
plant food, is absolutely necessary, as are also all of 
the chemical elements that enter into the formation of 
protoplasm. Other conditions, more difficult to ex¬ 
plain, are also necessary for life as we know it. 

Is there Life in Other Worlds? 

All in all, life in our world is possible only by the 
combination of so many and such peculiar conditions 



THE STORY OF THE TRANSMISSION OF LIFE 

TN thinking of living things it is most important to realize that they are all 

made up of tiny units of protoplasm which we call “cells.” These cells 
are of many kinds, each with a special task to perform. There are blood 
cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to all parts of the body, muscle cells 
for movement, giand cells to produce digestive juices, nerve cells to convey 
messages back and forth. But all of the cells that form a plant or an animal 
have come from a single cell at the beginning of its life. By a beautiful 
and mysterious process this single cell divides into two, and each of these 
into two—always two—and so on, until there have been formed the mil¬ 
lions and millions of cells that make up its body. 

Within the walls of each cell is a nucleus containing tiny threads of a sub¬ 
stance called “chromatin.” This chromatin is the most wonderful of all 
living matter, for it controls all life. The picture on the opposite page shows 
how the chromatin threads form tiny rods, which split in halves. It shows 
how these halves divide into two equal groups, and how each of these 
groups becomes the center of a new cell. The cells of an acorn multiply 
into a giant oak in just this way, and when you use up muscle cells in work 
or in play, new cells to take their place are produced in the same manner. 

But more wonderful still is the process at the beginning of a new life which 
keeps the vital flame burning. Consider a flowering plant, for instance. 
Down in the flowers, sheltered from harm, are many tiny delicate egg cells 
—the mother cells. A gust of wind, or an insect roving in search of nectar, 
brings to one of these a pollen grain from another flower. This pollen 
grain is the father cell. Left alone by themselves the mother cell and the 
father cell would die. But now the chromatin in the tiny father cell, fol¬ 
lowing a mysterious instinct which lies at the very heart of life’s secret, 
grows down into the flower and unites with the chromatin of the mother 
egg cell, and fertilizes it. At that moment the new life of the plant begins. 
The fertilized cell divides again and again, as described above, until it 
forms the tiny embryo plant, which lies folded up within the seed and is 
ready to unfold and grow when the seed germinates. 

The process is similar among animals,—a single tiny male cell pene¬ 
trates and fertilizes an egg cell, and causes it to develop into a new animal. 
Half of the chromatin in that first fertilized cell is given by the mother and 
half by the father. That is why the new life resembles both parents. As 
the cells go on dividing, each of them has material from both of the parents. 

Can you think of anything more wonderful than this strange power, 
locked up in a cell so small that the eye can’t see it—the power to multiply 
and create bone and muscle, nerves and brain, the power to create new 
life, and to carry over to that new life those complex details of face, features, 
complexion, and even of mind and character which the parents possessed? 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

394 















THE MOST WONDERFUL OF ALL LIFE’S PROCESSES 


Here you see Nature’s way of developing a new life from a fertilized egg. In the upper left-hand corner is a cell, enormously mag¬ 
nified. The sphere in the center is the “nucleus.” Those black rods shaped like bent pins inside the nucleus are “chromosomes.” 
They are made up of the wonderful substance called “chromatin,” half of which comes from the mother and half from the father. 
On the edge of the nucleus are two black specks called “centrosomes.” This first cell shows us the very beginning of life. Now 
watch that tiny life grow! In the upper right-hand corner the centrosomes have separated to opposite poles and a delicate arrange¬ 
ment of fibers has been formed to which the chromosomes have attached themselves. The cell in the center shows the most won¬ 
derful stage of all, for it tells us the secret of heredity. See how each of the chromosome rods has split lengthwise into exactly 
equal halves! In the next cell at the left, half of each rod has been pulled away from the other half by those centrosome fibers, 
forming now two separate groups, each made up of mother and father elements alike. In the last picture the cell walls have split, 
forming two new cells like the first. These will in turn split into two, and so again and again, and the new life will grow to become 
a plant, or a fish, or an elephant, or a man, depending upon the nature of the parent chromatin. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this 

395 


work 








Life of Land and Sea 


1 BIOLOGY 

that it seems to us there can be no life in other parts 
of the universe without the same combinations—a 
benevolent sun, an atmosphere, vast quantities of 
water, etc. Given these, however, is there life in 
other parts of the universe? Nobody knows! But 
why not? It may be of course that there are not the 
same types we know—that there may be insects with 
four pairs of legs instead of three, and three pairs of 
wings instead of two; and humans with three pairs 
of limbs instead of two. You may imagine almost 
any forms you like; but nobody knows anything 
about it. 

Space will permit but a few general considerations 
of the distribution and interrelations of living things 
in the world. In general the variety and wealth of 
plant life is on land, of animal life in the sea. 

The Life of the Land and the Life of the Sea 

All are familiar with the general conditions of life 
in the field and woods. The liberal vegetation, mostly 
of flowering plants, furnishes the fundamental food 
supply for animal life—insects, birds, mice, rabbits. 
Even where predacious animals feed on other ani¬ 
mals, the latter have fed on plants. The interrela¬ 
tions—“the web of life”—are extremely intricate. 
And so it is, in greatly magnified degree, in the tropi¬ 
cal forest. One thinks there of the luxuriant dense 
matted vegetation, sheltering its teeming life of insects 
and tropical birds and other strange life of the jungle. 
Here the web of life is so intricate as to baffle the 
imagination. 

In the sea all is different. While there is often 
much plant life in the form of seaweeds (flowerless 
plants), especially along rocky shores, the wealth of 
plant life of the open sea consists of the invisible 
microscopic forms, especially the diatoms. About 
the animals of the sea there is always a peculiar fasci¬ 
nation due to their abundance, their variety, and their 
strangeness. They are everywhere. Even the colder 
seas are populated by immense numbers of marine 
animals in great variety. Often along the shore— 
rocky, muddy, sandy—there is a baffling wealth of 
animal life the world over. The open sea has many 
peculiar forms at the surface, and still more peculiar 
ones at the bottom, even down as far as five miles. 
Fishes that are half mouth; crabs and their relatives 
that are mostly legs and feelers; starfish and their 
numerous relations; even delicate jellyfishes and 
polyps are there. And think of the conditions at 
these great depths—the tremendous pressure of five 
miles of water; the icy cold, even in tropical seas; the 
absolute darkness, except that a good many forms are 
phosphorescent—for not a ray of light penetrates 
much beyond a few hundred feet; the absolute quiet 
—for waves penetrate but a few feet. 

All of the food and energy for this animal life at 
the bottom of the sea is from or near the surface, and 
consists of the microscopic forms of plants, or the 
small animals that have fed upon them. Over per¬ 
haps a hundred million square miles of the sea bottom 
is a deep “ooze,” consisting of the skeletons of micro¬ 


scopic animals and plants that have rained down 
through the ages from the surface. 

Many forms of life are peculiar to the sea. Whole 
branches of the animal kingdom are found here alone 
and have never found their way into fresh water. 
Such are all the various forms of starfishes and their 
relatives; almost all of the great branch which includes 
the jellyfishes and polyps; almost all of the sharks; 
and other branches which might be named. Most of 
the life of the sea is fed, ultimately, by the micro¬ 
scopic plants that grow at the surface. Upon these 
tiny plants feed microscopic animals and small 
Crustacea, even some fishes; these in turn feed the 
larger animals, including fishes like the cod and 
sharks, and whales and porpoises and other cetaceans. 

Lives that Live on Other Lives 
Among the most interesting and important of the 
biological interrelations of organisms is that of 
parasitism. (There is scarcely a common form of life 
but has its many parasites. We think usually of the 
worms of many kinds that infest the intestine of man 
and most backboned animals; and of the insects, and 
other parasitic forms in or on the bodies of most 
visible forms of both plant and animal life. But the 
most deadly parasites for man and many other animals 
are the infinitely small microscopic bacteria of the 
plant world, and the protozoa among animals. It is 
they that kill most of mankind and other animals, 
and cause the rusts and smuts of grains, and the rots 
and blights of fruits and vegetables. Not all bac¬ 
teria, however, are bad. Many are harmless, and 
many are of great service in tearing down and getting 
rid of the dead bodies of larger animals and plants 
that would be in the way if not removed ( see 
Bacteria; Parasites). 

The Mystery of Life’s Beginnings 
Two or three branches of biology deserve special 
mention because of their significance and suggestive¬ 
ness. One of the most fascinating and mystifying 
is the study of the reproduction and development of 
animals and plants—their embryology {see Embryol¬ 
ogy). The coming into being of an organism, espe¬ 
cially one of the higher animals, remains one of the 
unsolved mysteries. Of course, it is popular knowl¬ 
edge that the common forms of life arise from fer¬ 
tilized egg-cells, but it may not be so well known that 
this is just as true for an earthworm or an oak tree 
as it is for a man or a chicken. It is true for the 
whole living world that “like begets like”—that all 
plants and animals, simple as well as complex, arise 
only from parents like themselves. The simplest 
forms of animal and plant life consist of a single 
cell; and they multiply merely by the single cell 
cutting itself in two, as described for the amoeba 
{see Amoeba). It seems hard to realize, however, 
that a human being, with its infinitude of characters, 
can arise from a tiny egg only a hundredth of an inch 
in diameter. It seems wonderful, too, that of three 
eggs, so nearly alike in size and appearance that it 
is difficult to tell them apart, one may give rise to a 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

396 








woodcock C\ 
(Alia) 


LLAMA 


Ante ic pl 


* " MUSK PEER. 

■SPECTACLED (A*Si3) 
SEAR -■ w. 


AFRlCAH ELEPHANT 


PHEASANT 


CHAMOIS OF THE 

•P£/?S/4V CAUCASUS 12 000 
WILD GOAT — 

FEET t 


Alpine 

CHAMOIS 


BIROS 
OP PREY 


T/CER 


. CHOUGH 

(Alpine Crow) 


BROWN BEAR. 


BIG HORN 


WARTM 06 


PTARMIGAN 


PEACOCK 


SWALLOW 


.- woodcock deer 
(Europe) (Europe) 0 


MOUNTAIN SHEEP 


PAPROT 


OSTRICH 


PINE 

MARTEN 


MOUNTAIN HARE 


CUCKOO 


ASIATIC ELEPHANT 


nos tribe 


hare 


marmot 


LEMUR 


WOMBAT 


KAN&AR.00 


MlBu OR A NO 
LYRE OTAN 

BIRO . 


JACKAL 


CONDOR 


ALTITUDE RECORDS IN THE ANIMAL WORLD 


Biology teaches us that living creatures can adapt themselves to widely different conditions of life, if they are given a chance to 
acquire new habits slowly from generation to generation. Here we see how various kinds of animals have become accustomed 
to altitudes ranging from sea-level to many thousand feet on the mountain slopes. But you must not imagine that the “higher-ups” 
have any advantage over the “lower-downs.” The Yak of the Tibetan plateau, for instance, could no more get along in the lowland 
jungle where the Orang-Utan lives, than the Orang-Utan could live in the Yak’s lofty home. You will notice that the Condor that 
great South American bird, is given the highest place. This is really an honor he doesn’t deserve, for, while the Condor flies’ over 
the highest peaks of the Andes, he doesn’t really live there, but nests much lower down. The Yak, after all, holds the championship 
for in the wild state he is found on mountains in Tibet, where few human visitors could long stand the rarefied air. It may surprise 
you to find the African Elephant and the Baboon so high up in the world. But remember that it is not nearly so cold at such heights 
in equatorial Africa as it is on the low frozen shores where the Polar Bear is found. An example of biological adaptation is provided 
by the Woodcocks. The Asiatic member of the family finds himself comfortable at 17,000 feet, but his European cousin seldom 
lives above 7,000 feet. While the Cat family as a rule flourishes best in lowland climates, the Siberian Tiger ranges as high as 
10,000 feet, doubtless lured there in pursuit of prey which sought to avoid him by fleeing higher. His long soft fur is a better 

protection against cold than the shorter coat of his Bengal brother. 


contained in the E a »y 


Reference Fact-Index at 

397 


the end of this 


u> or h 
































BIOLOGY 


Darwin and Evolution 



starfish, one to an earthworm, and the third to a 
human being. In reality these three eggs are very 
different from one another. 

The origins of the higher forms of life seem so 
natural to us now that it is hard to realize that people 
formerly believed that even complex animals, such as 
earthworms and frogs, arose by “spontaneous genera¬ 
tion,” that is from non-living matter, without 
parents. It is only in recent years, however, that 
science has proved that the origin of life is the same 
for the simplest forms as for the highest—for the in¬ 
finitely small germs of tuberculosis or malaria, and 
the whole multitude of plant and animal germs that 
have heretofore killed a large majority of mankind, 
as for mankind itself. At present it can be said that 
man has never created even the simplest form of life, 
or seen it arise spontaneously. Of course, a Burbank 
can perform wonders in modifying the common forms 
of plant and animal life, but can never create it. 

“His Mother’s Eyes and His Father’s Chin” 

Genetics, the study of the laws of inheritance, is the 
newest branch of biology, and dates back only about 
20 years. Since then it has been very much studied 
for there are “fashions” in science as well as in most 
human affairs. In 1900 it was realized that Gregor 
Mendel, an Austrian monk, working with peas nearly 
40 years before, had discovered some general laws of 
heredity of very great importance and very wide appli¬ 
cation. The amazing thing is that Mendel’s laws, 
found for peas, have since been found to hold good for 
many highly specialized plants and animals, even for 
some of the characters of man himself—such as the 
color of his hair and eyes, etc. How wide the applica¬ 
tion is, especially for man, has not yet been fully 
determined. While Mendel’s laws do not apply to 
all characters of plants and animals, they are known 
to be of sufficiently wide application to be of very 
great importance in the improvement of domestic 
plants and animals. 

It is common knowledge that plants and animals 
inherit the minutest characters from their parents. 
The amazing thing is that all the infinitude of these 
characters, large and small, are carried by an un¬ 
believably small amount of matter in the fertilized 
egg. Science tells ns that all of the people in the world 
at any one time have had their heredity carried by a 
total of less than an ounce of matter! Think of the 
wonder of the development of a human being, with 
all his infinitude of characters—his features, color of 
his hair and eyes, temperament, traits of character, 
and ability! Or of a great redwood tree, that is to 
live for several thousand years! 

Stories that the Rocks Tell Us 

Many plants and animals with hard parts have left 
remains in the rocks of the earth’s crust which are 
called “fossils.” The study of such remains is a 
branch of biology called paleontology, although this 
study is oftener connected with geology, the science 
of rocks. Paleontology more than any other science 
shows us the history of life in the world, through all 


of the millions of years of the infinite past. One of 
its most interesting revelations is that there are many 
forms of life that developed and flourished for ages, 
and then entirely disappeared from the earth. These 
include giant lizards more than 50 feet long; grotesque 
monstrous mammals; giant mosses the size of trees 
(see Animals, Prehistoric). It shows us the stages in 
the evolution of the horse, from ancestors the size of 
foxes. A thousand appealing things are shown by the 
study of fossils. Large parts of some kinds of rocks 
are formed by these remains of plants and animals. 
The great deposits of chalk, for example, often thou¬ 
sands of feet thick, consist almost wholly of the 
skeletons of microscopic animals. 

The Great Discoveries of Recent Years 

Several phases of biology may best be referred to 
by a brief history of the science during recent times. 
Great improvements in the microscope, as well as 
other improvements, along with the growth of science 
in general, made possible enormous advances in the 
science of biology during the 19th century. By far 
the larger part of what is now known of this subject 
is recent knowledge, amounting to a revolution in the 
science. 

(1) One of the first of these great advances was the 
realization that all plants and animals are made up 
of cells —that the cell is the unit of structure in all 
living things. In the simplest forms of life, both 
animal and plant, the whole organism is but a single 
cell. In all higher forms of life, man for instance, the 
body is composed of millions and millions of cells, of 
many kinds, each kind specialized for some special 
use—muscle cells for motion, gland cells for secretion, 
etc. 

(2) Following shortly upon the statement of the cell 
theory was the recognition that the essential part of 
a cell is its jelly-like substance, which we now call 
protoplasm, and that this material is much the same 
in all living things, although differing infinitely in 
details in different types of animals and plants, and in 
different parts of the same complex organism. When 
the egg develops into the human body, for instance, 
the protoplasm gradually becomes different in the 
various types of cells. 

(3) The greatest advance in biology followed 
Charles Darwin’s statement of the doctrine of organic 
evolution and the publication of his ‘ Origin of Species’ 
in 1859. The rapid acceptance of the view that living 
things are changeable, and that the diversified forms 
of life—of both animals and plants—have arisen by 
gradual changes from simpler forms, has had a very 
profound influence upon all fields of biological study 
(see Evolution). 

(4) Physiology is the study of properties, activities, 
and functions in living things. Formerly it was lim¬ 
ited almost wholly to man, and was mainly a part 
of medical study. With the general growth of 
biology, physiology has been extended to the study 
of all living things. This has brought great benefit 
to medical science itself, for a large part of what is 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see 

398 


i nf or motion 






] The Conquest of Disease 


now known of human physiology was first worked 
out upon frogs, cats, dogs, rabbits, etc. Fuller 
knowledge of plant physiology also has been of 
great benefit to agricultural science in recent years. 

(5) Between 1865 and 1890 
came many revolutionary dis¬ 
coveries by Pasteur and other 
workers, showing that fermen¬ 
tations and putrefactions are 
always caused only by minute 
organisms, and that these are 
always introduced from the 
outside, and never arise spon¬ 
taneously (see Pasteur, Louis). 

It was soon realized that most 
of the diseases of mankind 
and other animals are caused 
by these infinitely small ani¬ 
mal and plant parasites which 
we call germs. As applied to 
human living and well-being, 
no other discovery has ever 
been of such far-reaching 
importance. (See Germ 
Theory of Disease.) The 
whole fabric of health and 
disease hinges upon this knowl¬ 
edge, and the medical and 
surgical sciences have been 
revolutionized by it. 

(6) The science of genetics, 
which deals with the laws of 
inheritance, has already been 
sufficiently covered in what has been said above. 

It should always be remembered that any science, 
any field of human knowledge, grows by the labors and 
sacrifices of thousands of men, whom an unthinking 
and ungrateful world often forgets. Partly these dis¬ 
coveries are made by men who have in mind their 
practical use in “applied science”; partly they are 
made by men who work and advance science just for 
the sake of increasing man’s knowledge of the world 
in which we live. Often the discoveries of the latter 
class in “pure science” prove to have revolutionary 
importance in their practical applications. Such were 
some of Pasteur’s discoveries which helped to revolu¬ 
tionize medicine, though he was not a physician at all, 
but a chemist and biologist, and which made him 
perhaps the greatest benefactor of mankind in the 
19th century. 

BIRCH. Beautiful and graceful as a forest nymph, 
with its paper-white bark, slender spreading branches, 
and delicate foliage, this tree is widely distributed 
through North America, Europe, and Asia. There 
are several species of birches, most of them hardy 
and rapid of growth, though many of them are 
short-lived. The wood is hard and close-grained 
and is used for making furniture and for various 
manufacturing and building purposes; it also makes 
excellent fuel. The bark is much more durable than 


birch| 

the wood because it is impermeable to water, and 
long after the fallen trunks have rotted away, the en¬ 
circling bark remains sound and intact. Baskets, 
boxes, and many useful and fancy articles are made 


from the bark, as well as the birch canoes of the 
American Indians. 

The American white birch, which is native to the 
northeastern part of the United States and Canada, is 
a beautiful and plucky tree, springing up in deforested 
wastes and in abandoned fields. It seldom exceeds 45 
feet in height. The bark is smooth and white, not 
peeling readily as does the bark of many other species. 

The “canoe” or “paper birch” is one of the largest 
and most picturesque of the genus and is widely dis¬ 
tributed throughout the northern states. Its usual 
height is about 60 to 80 feet though it sometimes 
attains a height of 120 feet. The bark is chalky white 
in color, and tears off readily in horizontal sheets. 
This tree was valued highly by the Indians, who made 
from it their birch canoes, as well as bark baskets, 
buckets, dishes, and many other utensils. 

Another species, the cherry, black, or sweet birch, 
is a comely and useful tree which grows from 50 to 80 
feet high and has dark brown bark covered with wart¬ 
like spots. Early in the spring it glows with yellow 
catkins, and in the summer it has an abundance of 
glossy foliage which turns golden yellow in autumn. 
From the sweet sap of this tree birch beer is made, and 
children chew the tender twigs for their flavor. 

Scientific name of American white birch, Betula populi- 
folia; of canoe or paper birch, Betula papyrifera. 


THE NYMPH-LIKE GRACE OF THE WHITE BIRCH 




*4t 
** - 1 

• 

^ • 
V 

* i 



How graceful, how they suggest the Greek spirits of the wood! A moment ago they were 
dancing with their filmy draperies weaving lines of beauty in the air. Then they saw us 
coming and suddenly stopped stock still and pretended to be trees! On the left are the 
leaves with their catkins, and also with their broad winged seeds. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

399 








BIRDS 


Living Flying Machines ( 


Our CHARMING NEIGHBORS in FEATHER 

The Fascinating Story of 
the Lives , the Loves , and 
the Homes of One of Na¬ 
ture's Most I nter e sting 
Families , and how it De¬ 
veloped from the Reptiles 



s 


B IRDS. Of all animals birds are the most easily 
defined, because they are the only ones which 
bear feathers. The feathers are outgrowths from the 
skin, like the scales of reptiles or the hairs of mammals, 
but they are much more beautiful adaptations to the 
life which the birds lead (see Feather). 

Birds, with the fishes, reptiles, amphibians, and 
mammals, make up the division of the animal king¬ 
dom known as vertebrates or backboned animals. 
Because of the modifications necessary for flight, how¬ 
ever, the backbone of a bird, like the rest of its skele : 
ton, seems very different from those of the other 
vertebrates. If you examine the skeleton of a bird 
and compare it with that of a reptile or a mammal, you 
are impressed by the way in which nature makes over 
structures to suit different needs. Birds are believed 
to have evolved, during geologic times, from a reptile¬ 
like ancestor; and the differences in their structure 
which seem so great today have been brought about 
by the birds learning to fly. Birds today do not have 
teeth, but many fossil birds had teeth, just as their 
reptile cousins still have. 

How Nature Built the Bird for Flying 
The framework of an airplane or any flying machine 
must be very strong and compact and at the same 
time very light. A bird is a flying machine, and its 
skeleton is its framework; and the more we examine 
it the more impressed we become with the 
wonderful way in which nature has 
transformed each part to adapt 
it to the bird’s needs. 

The backbone for ex¬ 
ample has been short¬ 
ened, and the separate 
vertebrae of the trunk 
have been fused with 
each other and with 
the pelvis to give it 
greater strength. The 
ribs are firmly at¬ 
tached to this and also 
to the breastbone, and 

For any 


they have overlapping appendages to give the trunk 
great solidity. All of the bones are hollow, to give 
them the greatest strength for their weight. 

In an airplane the engine and the passengers and 
all the heavy parts are placed as near the center of 
gravity as possible, and with a bird it is the same. 
The outlying parts, such as the head and tail, wings 
and legs, are made extremely light, and the heavy 
muscles that work them are attached to the trunk, 
only the tendons extending to the outermost parts. 
When one examines the skull he is immediately im¬ 
pressed with the thinness of the bones. There are 
no teeth, and the jaws, therefore, need not be heavy; 
for the work of mastication, which would require 
muscles and weighty bones, is performed by the giz¬ 
zard, a modified portion of the stomach, located near 
the center of gravity. When we examine the tail, we 
see that the numerous vertebrae which make up the 
tail of a reptile are all shortened and fused into one 
little bone called the pygostyle. One is quick to 
notice that the largest muscles of the legs are located 
about the thigh bones, which are held close against 
the trunk and thus near the center of gravity. As if 
to make up for the shortening of the leg which this 
position causes, the ankle and foot bones are fused and 
drawn out into a long slender bone called the tarsus , 

i / 



Give him time! Give him time! You can’t expect that young Robin to swallow 14 feet of earthwoi 
all at once! But a little robin can and does eat 14 feet of earthworms every day—taking a worm 01 
piece of one at a time, you understand, as mother supplies it. 

subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

400 






] Why Birds Brood Their Eggs 


which is the only part of the leg that usually shows 
below the feathers, and to which the toes are attached. 
When we examine a bird’s wing, which is nothing more 

than the bird’s arm 
or front leg modi¬ 
fied for the partic- 
ular purpose of 
flight, we see how 
few heavy muscles 
are borne upon it. 
The strong muscles 
thatmanipulate 
the wings are at¬ 
tached to the keel 
of the breastbone, 
forming the famil¬ 
iar meat of the 
fowl’s breast, and 
are thus brought 
close to the center 
of gravity. The 
unnecessary bones 
of the wrist and 
hand are fused, only 

one finger remaining well developed, 
though traces of two others have been 
retained. Thus we might go on ex¬ 
amining every part of the bird’s anat¬ 
omy, and we should discover in each 
case that while the original reptilian 
parts are still recognizable, they have 
been transformed through the course 
of evolution to make the bird a perfect 
flying machine. 

Why the Reptile’s Blood 
Turned Warm 

Another great difference between 
birds and reptiles is that birds, in 
common with the mammals, are warm¬ 
blooded animals. The chief difference 
between warm-blooded and cold¬ 
blooded animals is that the warm¬ 
blooded have a constant temperature, 
while the temperature of the cold-blooded animals 
varies with that of their environment. It is for 
this reason that reptiles become very sluggish in 
cold weather, a characteristic that would not fit in 
well with the needs of a flying bird. We may 
assume, therefore, that one of the most important 
changes that took place in the development from 
the reptile was the change from a cold-blooded to 
a warm-blooded condition. This change brought 
with it many accompanying changes in the life of 
the bird, for it ordained that the bird’s eggs, also, 
should be maintained at a constant temperature, 
and that the temperature of the young should 
not fall below normal. This resulted in the need 
for “incubation” of the eggs, the building of nests, 
and the care of the young, which form such a con¬ 
spicuous part of the bird’s life today. This is likewise 


birds! 

one of the fundamental reasons for the comings and 
goings or the “migration” of birds, which makes their 
study so fascinating; for if they were still cold-blooded 
animals they would undoubtedly “hibernate” during 
cold weather. It is also the reason for their insatiable 
appetites. It is because Mother Nature developed in 
them a bodily temperature much higher than that of 
man that their life processes go on at a much more 
rapid rate, causing their ceaseless search for food. 

The eyes of birds are very highly developed, so that 
they can see great distances and follow rapidly moving 
objects. Thus a swallow or a night-hawk dashing 
through the air at breathless speed is able to keep its 
eyes on a tiny insect which is also moving rapidly. 
The eagle or vulture, soaring almost out of sight in 
the air, will dart with the speed of a bullet to a tiny 
object a human eye would hardly notice at a distance 
of a hundred feet. Likewise birds can adjust then- 
eyes for different distances much more quickly than 
can other animals. 

What We Owe to Our Feathered Friends 

This ceaseless search for food- gives birds their 
great economic value, for it enables mankind to com¬ 
pete with the hoards of insects for mastery of the 
earth’s surface. “Without the birds, 
not only would successful agriculture 
be impossible, but the destruction of 
the greater part of the vegetation 
would follow.” We can appreciate 
the meaning of this statement by 
H. W. Henshaw, former chief of the 
United States Biological Survey, if we 
stop to consider the great reproduc¬ 
tive capacity of most insects, particu¬ 
larly those that feed upon vegetation 
and are therefore dangerous to crops. 

The common potato bug, if left 
undisturbed, is capable of producing 
60 million offspring in a single season. 
A common plant louse, which brings 
forth living young, has such a short 
life cycle that there may be 13 genera¬ 
tions in a single season; and inasmuch as 
each female brings forth at least 50 young, the number 
in the 13th genera¬ 
tion alone would 
be 10 sextillion. If 
left undisturbed 
and given plenty of 
food, it would take 
any insect only a 
few years to com¬ 
pletely cover the 
earth with its off¬ 
spring. The need 
of birds and other 
enemies of insects 
is, therefore, very 
apparent. 

The astonishing 



One of the very earliest of the early 
birds, the Archaeopteryx, now found 
only as a fossil. The reptile relationship 
can clearly be seen in the teeth in both 
jaws and the three claw-bearing fingers 
on each wing. 



The Hoatzin of the Amazon Val¬ 
ley is the nearest living approach 
to the Archaeopteryx. The 
young have claws on their wings 
with which they climb about 
the trees. 



When the Hoatzin (also called the 
Ama) grows up, the wing claws are 
shed and the bird looks much like a 
pheasant. This remarkable bird is a 
native of the Amazon Valley. 


contained in the Easy 


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401 


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Work 









How Birds Serve Men 



For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

402 


number of insects consumed by birds has been revealed 
by scientists in several ways—first, by watching indi¬ 
vidual birds in the field through high-power glasses 
and counting the insects eaten; secondly, by examin¬ 
ing the contents of crops and stomachs of birds 
that have been shot 
while feeding; and 
third, by watching 
the life of the birds 
at their nests and 
observing the food 
brought to the 
young. As exam¬ 
ples of the first 
method, a scar¬ 
let tanager was 
watched feeding in 
a tree infested with 
gypsy moths, and 
in 18 minutes was 
seen to consume 
630 caterpillars. A 
northern yellow- 
throat was watched 
feeding in a birch 
tree infested with 
plant lice, and in 40 
minutes was seen 
to pick off 3,500 of 
the little insects. 

As examples of the 
second method, the 
contents of a few 
stomachs examined 
by experts in the 
Biological Survey 
at Washington may 
be listed. Of two 
yellow - billed cuc¬ 
koos examined, one 
contained 217 fall 
web-worms and the 
other 250 tent cat¬ 
erpillars. Of two 
night-hawks exam¬ 
ined, one contained 
60 grasshoppers 
and the other 500 mosquitoes. The crop of a cedar 
waxwing contained 100 canker worms, and that of a 
flicker contained 1,000 chinch bugs. As examples of 
the third method, a pair of chickadees were observed 
to feed their young 40 times in 30 minutes; a pair of 
purple martins fed their young 312 times in a day; and 
a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks fed their young 426 
times in 11 hours. The most remarkable case of feed¬ 
ing on record is that of a house-wren, which fed its 
young 1,217 times in 15 hours and 45 minutes. It has 
been shown by experimenting with young birds that 
they require from one-half to their full weight of food 
every day in order to grow. Thus a young robin, 


when leaving the nest, required 14 feet of earth¬ 
worms to keep it satisfied. 

Other Things the Birds Do for Us 
It is not only by the destruction of insects that birds 
play an important part in the economy of man. 

Many of them de¬ 
rive a large part of 
their food from the 
seeds of weeds, and 
so help in keeping 
down these pests 
also. Here again 
the amount which 
they consume is 
remarkable. From 
the crops of two 
bob-whites, for ex¬ 
ample, were taken 
1,700 and 5,000 
weed seeds respec¬ 
tively, while two 
mourning doves 
yielded 7,500 seeds 
of sorrel and 9,200 
seeds of pigeon 
grass. 

A third way in 
which birds help 
man in his pursuit 
of agriculture is by 
eating the small 
rodents which are 
very destructive to 
grain and forage 
crops, and which 
frequently do thou¬ 
sands of dollars’ 
damage in winter 
by girdling fruit 
trees. The common 
meadow mouse is 
so prolific that in 
five years, if all the 
offspring of a sin¬ 
gle pair lived, they 
would number sev¬ 
eral million. It is 
therefore necessary to have some natural check 
upon their numbers, and nature has provided the 
hawks and owls. Each hawk or owl requires the 
equivalent of three mice a day in order to live, or over 
1,000 a year. These birds, therefore, have a consider¬ 
able money value to the farmer upon whose land they 
take up residence. It is a noteworthy fact that fol¬ 
lowing the so-called “plagues of mice,” when these 
pests overrun districts by the thousands, there is 
always a flight of owls, usually of the short-eared 
species. Nature seems to take this method of regain¬ 
ing her balance. 

A fourth way in which birds serve man is as game. 


Man learned to fly by modeling a machine along the same lines as the body of a 
bird. The similarity between the airplane and the Sea Gull is shown here in a 
striking way—the same method of steering with the tail, and of turning up or 
down the rear edges of the wings for maneuvering. While the Gull can twist and 
turn through the air more deftly than the flying machine, the latter can beat any 
bird in a straight-away race. 







{"some Mischief-Makers 



BIRDS 


Certain birds, such as the grouse, pheasants, snipe, 
woodcock, ducks, and geese, seem to serve man best 
by providing him with invigorating sport and food for 
the table. None of them are particularly important 
as a destroyer of insects, and many of them become 
even harmful to agriculture if they occur in large 
numbers. Such birds are naturally prolific, and when 
properly protected by game laws are able to with¬ 
stand, in suitable localities, the losses which they 


small fruits, so that early strawberries, raspberries, 
and cherries often suffer from their depredations. 
Where there is a plentiful supply of the native fruits, 
however, or where many mulberry trees have been 
planted, the cultivated fruits are left alone. Other 
birds, that customarily feed upon weed seed, often 
prove destructive in grain and rice fields, so that it 
is necessary to frighten them away. Blank cartridges 
are as effective as the loaded ones, and they have the 


FIVE HIGHWAYMEN OF THE AIR 



It all depends on your point of view whether you consider these feathered bandits as your friends or your foes. The Crow for 
instance, attunes eats the eggs of other birds and kills their young in the nests; but he also destroys an enormous number of harmful 
insects, and expert agriculturists look upon him as a benefit to the farmer. The Great Horned Owl will occasionally dine on a voune 
chicken, but his usual fare consists of field mice which are enemies of crops. Not so much can be said for Cooper’s Hawk and its. 
smaller relative the Sharp-shinned Hawk, for these live chiefly on birds and poultry. The Shrike, on the other hand, destroys great 
numbers of grasshoppers, mice, young snakes, frogs, etc., as well as an occasional sparrow. His habit of pinning the bodies of his 

victims on thorns has won him the name of “Butcher-Bird.” 


receive. Certain species, like the ring-necked pheas¬ 
ant and mallard duck, are being bred in captivity in 
large numbers and released where the natural supply 
of game has been greatly depleted. The subject of 
game breeding is receiving more and more attention 
in this country, and is being encouraged by legislation 
so that in a few years it will undoubtedly offer an 
inviting occupation to young people interested in 
birds. 

Although practically all birds are valuable to man 
in some one of the four ways mentioned, there are a 
few that usually prove troublesome at certain seasons 
of the year. Most birds, for example, are fond of 


advantage of preserving the birds to feed upon the 
insect pests the following spring and summer. Crows, 
hawks, and the great horned owl are enemies of the 
poultryman and the game breeder, but otherwise they 
serve an important function. 

The Delights of Bird Study 
It is not merely because of their economic value, 
however, that birds are so extensively studied all over 
the world. Their cheerful songs, their bright colors, 
their many pleasing ways, serve to draw thousands of 
people from lives of confinement or inactivity into the 
woods and fields, in the pursuit of recreation that is 
as health-giving as it is fascinating. Those who are 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this 

403 


work 






BIRDS 


Where is a Bird’s Home? 



unable to go far afield can, by suitably planting their 
grounds or offering food and water, attract dozens of 
these little feathered sprites close to their windows, 
where they can with little effort watch their many 
amusing and interesting ways and hear their cheerful 
songs. Though we may fix the dollar value upon the 
insects devoured by the little song sparrow, we can 
never estimate the wealth which his cheerful song 
brings to those that have an appreciation of birds. 
And it is the small birds who are the singers generally, 
while the large ones are of little or no importance as 
songsters. 

The Geography of the Bird World 

As soon as one begins to observe birds he discovers 
that the different kinds are found in different sorts of 
places. Some, like the robin and bluebird, are widely 
distributed in woodlands, orchards, and gardens 
throughout the country from Alaska to the Gulf, 
while others are restricted to certain localities or to 
particular environments. Thus the Ipswich sparrow 
nests only on Sable Island, Nova Scotia; and the 
Kirtland’s warbler is found, during the summer, only 
in the jack-pine woodlands of central 
and northern Michigan. If one wishes 
to see rails, gallinules, and coots he goes 
to the marshes; and if he wishes to see 
bobolinks, meadow-larks, and vesper 
sparrows he goes to the upland fields. 

The study of local distribution offers 
many interesting problems to the ama¬ 
teur as well as to the scientific orni¬ 
thologist. 

The study of the distribution of birds 
over the surface of the earth, or their 
geographic distribution, offers many 
other difficult and fascinating problems. 

If the world should be charted accord¬ 
ing to its families of birds rather than 
according to its races of people or its 
governments, it would make a strange 
map, because all the birds of the 
Northern Hemisphere are more closely 
related to each other than are the birds of many 
adjacent islands of the East Indies. Six main 
divisions or geographic regions have been recog¬ 
nized by ornithologists, as follows: New Zealand, 
Australian, Neotropical (South America) Indian, 
African, and Palearctic (North America, Europe, and 
northern Asia). While a few birds are found all 
over the world, and others in two or more of these 
regions, the vast majority of species and many 
whole families are restricted to some one of these 
geographic regions. In traveling around the world, 
therefore, one would expect to find greater difference 
between the birds of North and South America or 
between those of Europe and Africa than between 
those of Europe and North America. When we study 
the birds of the East Indian Islands, we discover some 
of the strangest facts of distribution, for a part of the 
islands lies in the Australian region and a part in the 


Indian, and the line between the two is very sharp. 
Thus the islands of Bali and Lombok (in the Malay 
Archipelago just east of Java), though but 20 miles 
apart, differ as greatly in their animal life as do Africa 
and South America, indicating that the two islands 
have never been united and that the deep strait sepa¬ 
rating them marks the dividing line between what was 
formerly the Australian continent and that of Asia— 
Bali belonging to Asia and Lombok to Australia. 

In consideration of the geographic distribution of 
birds, the home of each species is considered to be that 
place where it builds its nest and raises its young, but 
many species migrate with the change of seasons from 
one region to another. Thus many of the North 
American birds spend the winter in South America, 
but do not nest there. 

The Wonders of Bird Migration 

In all the fields of Nature study you will find noth¬ 
ing more wonderful than this seasonal migration of 
birds. The little bobolink that visits the northern 
United States in summer, travels 5,000 miles over 
land and sea to his winter home on the pampas of 
southern Brazil. The golden plover 
wings a 2,000-mile flight over the 
Atlantic from Labrador and Nova 
Scotia to South America without a 
stop; while his relatives on the Pacific 
coast each year travel the 2,000 miles 
from Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands 
and back again. Not all birds, of 
course, migrate; for woodpeckers, nut¬ 
hatches, chickadees, grouse, and a host 
of others are permanent residents of 
Canada and the United States. But 
robins and bluebirds, herons and ducks, 
warblers, fly-catchers, thrushes, and 
hundreds of other species join the 
yearly migration from south to north 
and back again. (See Migration.) 

The Mating of the Birds 
During the winter the birds travel 
about in scattered groups, searching 
for food; and of course they do not nest, although 
a few of them sing fragments of their songs. The 
sexes are often in distinct flocks, and the reproduc¬ 
tive organs are very small and nonfunctional. With 
the approach of spring the reproductive organs 
begin to enlarge and the birds begin to feel the 
instinct to move northward. The males are usually 
the first to start north, and arrive on the nesting 
grounds from a few days to a few weeks before the 
females. Once arrived, the males usually select 
the general locations where they wish to nest, and 
drive all rival males from these areas; at the same 
time they try to entice the females to remain and to 
mate with them. 

Often a male returns to the same spot year after 
year, and frequently his former mate returns also and 
they remate for another year. This may occur until 
the death of one bird, when the surviving member 


THE LAZY COWBIRD 



A Cowbird, too lazy to hatch her 
own young, has laid two eggs in a 
Yellow Warbler’s nest. Each 
time the Warbler covered over 
the unwelcome egg, and at last 
got a chance to lay her own eggs. 


For any subject 


not found in 


itt alphabetical 

404 


place 


see information 






BIRDS 



ordinarily finds a new mate and often returns to the 
same nesting site. Thus a pair of orioles have been 
known to nest in the same tree for 33 years, but un¬ 
doubtedly they were not the same two birds. Although 
monogamy or a single mating for the year is the rule, a 
few birds, akin to our common poultry, such as the 
turkey, grouse, and pheasant, are regularly polyg¬ 
amous—that is, each male is mated to several 
females. Polygamy occasionally occurs among other 
birds, especially the wrens and blackbirds. Cowbirds 
do not have permanent mates, even for a single season, 
as they do not take care of their own young, but lay 
their eggs in other birds’ nests. A bird of tropical 
America called the anis is regularly communistic— 
that is, the members of this species build a common 
nest in which several females 
lay their eggs, and all help to 
care for the young. 

How the Birds Go Courting 

Mating is never accom¬ 
plished without a more or less 
elaborate courtship. It is dur¬ 
ing this period that birds are 
seen and heard to the best 
advantage, for the male birds 
try to make themselves as con¬ 
spicuous as possible, both by 
their songs and by the display 
of their plumage. Of course 
all birds do not sing, and a few 
—such as the storks, the peli¬ 
cans, and the frigate birds— 
seem to be voiceless in adult 
life. True song is confined to 
the higher families of birds, 
and reaches its best develop¬ 
ment among the thrushes. 

The vocal organs of a bird 
are somewhat different from 
those of man, for instead of 
having vocal chords located in 
the larynx at the upper end of 
the trachea or windpipe, they 
have simple membranes, which 
vibrate, located at the lower 
end of the trachea in a structure called the syrinx. 
The shape of this structure, and the number of 
muscles which control the tension of the membranes, 
vary with the different families of birds and produce 
the different songs. 

Birds which are unable to sing usually have substi¬ 
tutes for song to announce their presence to the 
females. Thus the woodpeckers produce a loud tat¬ 
too by hammering with their bills upon a hollow limb 
or other resounding surface. The ruffed grouse pro¬ 
duces a loud drumming sound by beating the air with 
its wings; and the woodcock produces a winnowing 
sound by mounting high in the air and zigzagging back 
to earth on set wings so that the wind whistles through 
the three outer wing feathers. 


Even more interesting than the sounds produced by 
birds are the many curious displays of plumage and 
courtship antics. The display of the peacock, the 
turkey, and the domestic rooster are familiar to all; 
and many of the smaller birds can often be seen going 
through similar performances. Other birds, such as 
the pouter pigeons, the prairie chickens, and the 
European bustards, have peculiar air-sacs which they 
inflate during their courtship, giving them a very 
grotesque appearance. The European skylarks and 
our horned larks perform feats of flying during their 
courtships that are quite spectacular. After mount¬ 
ing to such a height that they are barely visible, and 
after hovering and singing at that dizzy height, they 
suddenly close their wings and drop like stones toward 
the earth. One thinks they 
are about to dash themselves 
to pieces, when they grace¬ 
fully spread their wings and 
alight, only to repeat the per¬ 
formance. Many of the alba¬ 
trosses and cranes, and certain 
small birds as well, have elab¬ 
orate series of hops, skips, and 
bows which might be likened to 
old-fashioned dances. Among 
the most elaborate courtship 
performances are those of the 
bower birds of Australia, which 
build little bowers of twigs or 
plant stems. These bowers are 
entirely distinct from their 
nests, and are usually decorated 
with bright berries, shells, or 
flowers, which are renewed as 
often as withered. 

“Now for That House 
of Ours” 

After mating, birds usually 
set about nest-building imme¬ 
diately. Although the male 
has already selected the nesting 
area, the female usually selects 
the exact nesting site and builds 
the nest, the male standing 
guard near by or accompanying her in her search for 
nesting material, and permitting no other male to 
approach within his precincts. The character of the 
nest depends upon the species of bird and the family 
to which it belongs. It has undoubtedly had its 
origin in the requirements of the young—how long 
they must use it and the dangers to which they are 
exposed—together with the intelligence of the bird in 
meeting these requirements. 

When birds evolved from their reptilian ancestors, 
they undoubtedly at first laid their eggs as do the 
turtles and lizards today, burying them in the sand 
or hiding them in holes in trees. But as they became 
warm-blooded creatures and the need for incubation 
arose to keep the eggs at a constant temperature, it 


STATELY COURTING OF THE CRANES 



m 


Nothing can exceed in stately ceremony the dances 
of the Cranes. A traveler in Alaska thus describes 
one of these very formal social events: “The male 
suddenly wheeled his back towards the female and 
made a low bow, his head nearly touching the 
ground and ending by a quick leap into the air. 
Another pirouette brought him facing his charmer, 
whom he greeted with a still deeper bow, his wings 
meanwhile hanging loosely at his side. She 
replied by an answering bow and hop, and then 
each tried to outdo the other in a series of spas¬ 
modic hops and starts mixed with grave and 
ceremonious bows.” 


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Mystery of Egg Coloring 


BIRDS 


was necessary to lay them above ground, so that they 
could be brought into contact with the bird’s body. 
At first the birds probably did not even scratch de¬ 
pressions to keep the eggs from rolling about, but 
laid them on the flat ground as do the night-hawks 
and whippoorwills today. The next stage was doubt¬ 
less the scratching of depressions to keep the eggs 
from rolling, and we find this stage represented today 
by the nests of the killdeer and other plovers. An 
advance from this stage was the addition of a lining 
to the depression, such as is seen in the nests of the 
sandpipers. Such nests, however, give little protec¬ 
tion against long spells of wet weather or against the 
numerous terrestrial enemies. It is easy to imagine 
that the birds that learned to raise their nests above 
ground, first on piles of vegetation and then into 
bushes and trees, were more successful in raising their 
young, especially if the young had to remain in the 
nest for some time. 

It is not difficult to select from the nests built by 
birds today a series which shows 
the probable evolution of nest 
architecture, from the crudest to 
the most elaborate. Thus, the 
simplest platforms of sticks are 
built in the trees by the herons, 
while the crows and hawks build 
more substantial structures of 
sticks with deeper hollows to hold 
the eggs and usually with linings 
of softer materials. Continuing 
up the scale we find the coarse 
twigs discarded for finer and softer 
materials, until we come to such 
nests as those of the yellow warbler 
or goldfinch, which are made 
almost entirely of plant downs 
or other woolly substances. The 

highest type of 
nest is perhaps 
the beautifully 
woven structures 
of the oriole, hung 
at the tip end of 
a branch, though 
many of the sim¬ 
pler nests show 
curious special¬ 
izations. The 
nest of the hum- 
ming-bird and 
that of the wood 
pewee, for exam¬ 
ple, are covered 
on the outside 
with lichens and 
bits of bark, so 
that they resemble knots instead of birds’ nests. 
Robins, wood thrushes, and vireos weave in pieces of 
paper or cloth, to disguise their nests. 


COURTSHIP OF HUMMING-BIRDS 


In selecting their nesting material, birds ordinarily 
take that which is nearest at hand, so long as it con¬ 
forms to the type of the nest which that species 
builds. Thus 
field birds ordi¬ 
narily use grasses 
and hairs, wood¬ 
land birds use 
leaves and root¬ 
lets, and marsh 
birds use sedges 
and cattails. 

Birds like the 
oriole, therefore, 
which ordinarily 
use plant fibers, 
are quick to avail 
themselves of 
strings or yarn 
put out for them. 



A GROUSE DRUMMING 



When the Humming-bird is courting, the 
lady sits on a twig while her little knight 
flies over her backward and forward in a 
circle. Each time he passes her he swoops 
sharply coming as near her as possible. 


e/ 


This Grouse is sending a “wireless” mes¬ 
sage to the lady Grouse of the neighbor¬ 
hood by beating the air with his wings. 
This produces a peculiar whirring noise, 
easily recognized at a considerable distance. 


MR. FLICKER SHOWING OFF 



Mr. and Mrs. Flicker have dug out 
their little cottage in a tree and Mrs. 
Flicker, sitting in the front door, is 
watching Mr. Flicker “show off” for her 
special benefit. 


It will be noticed, however, that 
they select only the light-colored 
pieces, which resemble the natural 
plant fibers. 

Some kinds of birds are much 
more adaptable than others in 
suiting their nests and nesting 
places to changed conditions, and 
these are the ones that have been 
able to hold their own and even 
increase in numbers with the 
coming of civilization into this 
country. The bluebirds, wrens, 
chickadees, etc., that utilize neat 
boxes instead of holes in trees; and the phoebe, that 
nests under bridges instead of on rock ledges; the 
barn and cliff swallows, that have deserted the cliffs 
for human habitations; and especially the omnipresent 
house sparrow, are examples of this power of adap¬ 
tation. 

How Long it Takes to Build a Nest 
The time used to build a nest depends upon how 
much time the bird has before its first egg is ready to 
be laid. With ordinary birds the time required is 
about a week; but there have been many instances— 
when the first nest has been destroyed and the eggs 
are ready to be laid—of birds building their entire 
nests in a day. Occasionally birds that are permanent 
residents, such as the chickadees, or that arrive early 
in the spring, as do the phoebes, begin their nests long 
before the eggs are mature, and consume several weeks 
in building a structure that could be completed in a 
few days if necessary. At times certain birds simply 
mend old nests left the year before. 

The eggs of birds are among the most beautiful 
creations of all nature. They vary in color from those 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

406 






BIRDS 




Pied-billed Grebe 

Fashions in nest building vary widely, as you can see here. That curious sea-bird the Murre solves the problem by not making 
a nest at all. Her single egg is laid on bare rocky cliffs, but its peculiar top shape insures its safety, for as soon as it starts to roll, 
it swings around in a circle. You can trace the development of nest architecture in the other pictures, from the crude bundle of 
twigs piled roughly together by the Green Heron, to the wonderfully elaborate weaving done by the Oriole. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

407 


| Advertising to the Enemy" 


Murre 




that are as white as 
snow to those that 
are almost black, 
but the majority 
have a ground color 
of some delicate tint 
and are spotted or 
streaked with much 
darker colors. The 
yolk of the egg is formed en¬ 
tirely in the ovary of the 
mother bird, the albumen in 
the upper two-thirds of the ovi¬ 
duct, the shell in the lower third, 
and the color in the lowest end of 
the oviduct or else in the cloaca 
just before it passes out. 

Many theories have been 
advanced to account for the 
coloration of eggs. It is almost 
certain that the color, as origi¬ 
nally developed, was of some 
value to the eggs, probably in render¬ 
ing them less conspicuous; for eggs 
like those of the woodpeckers and king¬ 
fishers, that have always been laid in 
dark holes where the color would not 
be seen, are pure white. Eggs such as 
those of the plovers and terns, on the 
other hand, that are laid in exposed 
places with no protecting nest, are colored 
like the soil or gravel and are very difficult to 


find. The majority of eggs, however, that are laid in 
nests, seem to be conspicuously marked rather than 
otherwise, for they are white or some light tint in 
ground color. In such nests there is no need for pro¬ 
tectively colored eggs, because the bird ordinarily 
selects a site where the whole nest will be inconspicuous 
and thus hides her eggs at the same time. Thus 
it has come about that, with the evolution of 
nests, the need for protectively colored eggs 
has disappeared and the pigment has gradually 
degenerated, causing the many beautiful but 
conspicuous eggs that we find today. Indeed, 
it is the writer’s belief that it is an advantage 
for nest-building birds to have conspicuous 
eggs; for if there is an enemy living in the 
vicinity that will sooner or later discover the 
Heron nest, it is to the bird’s advantage to have it 
broken up as soon as possible so it can go 
elsewhere and try again before the season is 
too far advanced. If the nest remains safe 
through the first few days when the con¬ 
spicuous eggs are left exposed, it stands 
a good chance of remaining safe through 
the entire period. 

Number and Size of Eggs 
It requires about 24 hours for an egg to 
0 ci be formed, so that ordinarily one 
H awk e o§ is laid each day, at about the 

same time, until the normal num¬ 
ber for the species is complete. 
This number varies ac¬ 
cording to the dangers to 
which the eggs and young 
are exposed. Many sea 
birds that nest on inacces¬ 
sible cliffs lay but a single 
egg, while the majority 






BIRDS 


of game birds and water fowl, that have numerous 
enemies, lay from 10 to 20. The usual number for 
most birds is from three to five. If the last egg is 
removed from a nest as often as laid, the bird’s ovary 
is sometimes stimulated to keep forming eggs in an 
endeavor to secure the normal number in the nest 
before the bird begins to incubate. Thus a flicker 
laid 74 eggs in 71 days, and the domestic fowl has 
been known to lay as many as 314 eggs in a year. 

The size of eggs is fixed for each species, and varies 
from that of the humming-bird, which resembles a 
small bean, to that of the ostrich, which is between 
five and six inches in diameter. Occasionally, with 
very old domestic fowls or at the close of the egg- 
laying period, very small eggs are laid. Occasionally 
also two or even three eggs become enclosed in a single 
shell, forming the so-called “double-yolked eggs.” 
These abnormalities occasionally occur also with wild 
birds. In general the size of the eggs varies with the 
size of the bird, but birds whose 
young are hatched blind and helpless 
lay much smaller eggs than those 
whose young are covered with down 
and able to run about when hatched. 

Thus the catbird and the spotted 
sandpiper are about the same size, 
but the egg of the sandpiper is about 
twice the size of that of the catbird. 

How the Egg Becomes a Bird 

With the laying of the last egg 
most birds begin to incubate, but a 
few like the owls begin to incubate 
with the laying of the first egg, caus¬ 
ing the young to hatch on different 
days. The time required for eggs 
varies with the size of the egg, though 
for some reason a few small eggs re¬ 
quire a longer time than some of the 
larger ones. Thus, while the eggs 
of the red-winged blackbird require 
but 12 days, and the eggs of the 
robin but 14, the eggs of the humming-bird require 
15 days to hatch. Hen’s eggs require 21 days, ducks’ 
27, geese’s 35, etc. In addition to being maintained 
at a constant temperature by the heat of the bird’s 
body, the eggs have to be regularly turned by the old 
bird, and occasionally moistened to keep the pores in 
the shell open and the membranes which line the shell 
moist so that the embryo can breathe. 

With most birds the work of incubation is per¬ 
formed entirely by the female, the male either feeding 
her on the nest or standing guard by the nest while 
she flies off to feed. With dull-colored or sparrow-like 
species, in which the males are as dully colored as the 
females, the males share the duties of incubation; and 
the same is true of a few brightly colored birds, like 
the rose-breasted grosbeak. 

There are two types of young birds—those that 
remain helpless in the nest for some time, and those 
which can run about as soon as hatched. The first 


BABY BITTERNS 


Prepared Foods for Baby Birds | 

class are hatched blind and helpless, with only a scant 
covering of down. Their parents build well-formed 
nests in which they remain for varying lengths of 
time—from a week in such ground-nesting species as 
the vesper sparrow and horned lark, to a year in such 
birds of flight as the condor and the wandering alba¬ 
tross. The young of the second class, on the other 
hand, like those of the domestic fowl, are fully covered 
with down when hatched, have their eyes open almost 
immediately, and are able to follow their parents 
about in their search for food. They remain in the 
nest only a few hours, and their parents must, there¬ 
fore, be birds that live on the ground or in the water. 
Taking Care of the Young 
All young of the helpless type are fed at first on 
partially digested food brought up from the crop of 
the parent bird. Doves, petrels, albatrosses, and a 
few other birds continue this method of feeding as 
long as the young require care; but the majority of 
birds soon begin to bring fresh food 
to the young. This is usually car¬ 
ried in the bills or in the talons of 
the old birds; but herons, humming¬ 
birds, waxwings, and a few other 
birds continue to carry the food in 
their crops although it is not all 
digested. 

The food of most young birds con¬ 
sists of insects at first, this being 
varied later by fruits or even seeds 
with some species. The insects are 
placed far down into the throats of 
the young birds, which normally 
stretch up their necks and open their 

-,, _ mouths widely at the approach of 

|v S their parents. Swallowing is en- 
*' ''*■ - tirely automatic, and unless food is 

placed beyond the base of the tongue, 
the muscles do not act and the food 
remains in the open mouth unswal¬ 
lowed. There is likewise a nervous 
adjustment to prevent the young from being overfed, 
for after each has received sufficient food, the throat 
muscles refuse to work and the food remains unswal¬ 
lowed. After feeding, the parent bird always inspects 
the mouths of the young, which usually remain wide 
open, and if any food remains unswallowed, she re¬ 
moves it and gives it to one of the other young. As 
stated in the paragraphs on economic importance, 
the amount of food taken by young birds is surprising, 
for they require from one-half to their full weight of 
food each day in order to grow. To keep up this 
supply both parents work from early morning until 
nearly dark. In a few cases, like that of the hum¬ 
ming-bird, the male bird never assists in the care of 
the young; but in most cases, the male is even more 
industrious than the female, and is likewise more cour¬ 
ageous in the presence of danger. 

After each feeding the nest is regularly inspected 
and all excrement is removed, so that the nest is 



The babies in a Bittern’s nest “come 
in sizes.” The reason for this is that 
the parents begin hatching the eggs 
just as soon as Mrs. Bittern has laid 
the first. 


For any .abject not found in it. alphabetical place ,ee information 

408 






| Tidy Housekeeping in Nests 



BIRDS 



The study of feet among the birds may be called a scientific kind of “palmistry,” for it tells a great deal about their lives, as the 
palmists pretend to do about the lives of human beings by looking at the lines in their hands. Here is what a bird “palmist” would 
say to an Ostrich on looking at that foot of his (1): “Your grandparents of some millions of years ago had five toes. The other 
three have disappeared because your family have put in so much time running. The third toe has grown very big, while the fourth 
toe, the only other one you have left, is dwindling. In the case of your grandchildren it will probably disappear altogether, just as 
happened with the horse.” 

Another thing the “palmist” would say to all these birds whose feet we see before us is: “Pardon me,—it doesn’t sound like a nice 
thing to say to you—but your early ancestors were reptiles.” He knows it by those scales, except in the case of the Tawny Owl (8) 
and the Ptarmigan (9), whose legs and toes are covered with feathers. All the other feet are scaled: Plover (2), Skylark (3), Apteryx 
(4), Night-jar (5), Sea Eagle (6), Toucan (7), Three-toed Woodpecker (10),.Green Woodpecker (11), Stork (12), Grebe (13), Mergan¬ 
ser (14), Pelican (15). 

Feet 12 to 15 are clearly those of birds that frequent the water. In the Stork (12) the web reaches only to the first joint. In the 
Grebe (13) the web is attached to each toe, but these toe webs do not join. This makes it convenient for walking as well as swim¬ 
ming. Although Plovers (2) are water birds, they wade along shallow shores and so, instead of webbed feet for swimming, have 
long toes to distribute their weight as they walk over the sand and mud. A Woodpecker’s feet (10 and 11) are arranged to give 
them a good grip on tree trunks. Toucans (7) like the Green Woodpecker have two toes projecting forward and two backward, 
while the Owl (8) can turn his third toe either backward or forward, as he chooses. 


A BIRD’S FORTUNE BY I 

How the Wise Men of the Bird World Have 
Reduced their “ Palmistry” to a Science 


kept scrupulously clean. Flesh-eating and fish-eating 
birds are exceptions to this rule, and their nests often 
become quite foul. 

Clothes of the Bird and How They are Changed 

A few young birds of the helpless type, such as 
flickers and pelicans for example, are absolutely naked 
when hatched, but the majority have a scant covering 
of down on the back and on the top of the head. 
Feather growth starts immediately, and within a week 
or 10 days the majority of small birds are fully covered 
with feathers, and within 10 days or two weeks are 
able to fly. The largest birds of flight, however,— 
the condor and the albatross—as already indicated, 
do not learn to fly for nearly a year. 

The first covering of all young birds is called the 
natal plumage. The covering of the fledgling is called 
the juvenal plumage, and it is worn only a short time 
after leaving the nest. It is then replaced by the 
first winter plumage. These feathers are worn through- 

Reference 


out the winter; but, in the case of most birds, towards 
spring they are replaced by the first breeding or 
nuptial plumage. This is worn throughout the breed¬ 
ing season, being replaced again in the fall by the 
winter plumage. 

The change from one plumage to another is called 
a molt, and takes place very gradually. When a bird 
is in good health only a few feathers are shed at a 
time, and these are replaced before others are shed, 
the whole process requiring from one to tw r o months. 
The molt always begins at a definite place on the bird’s 
body, and the feathers are lost in a regular order. 
Thus, in the wing, the first feather to be lost is always 
the innermost primary feather, and when the new 
feather replacing it is about half grown, the next one is 
shed; and so on, so that the bird is never deprived of 
the pow’er of flight. In a few swimming and diving 
birds, that are not entirely dependent upon their 
wdngs for escape, all of the flight quills are shed at one 

Fact-Index at the end of t hi s work 

409 


contained in the E a$y 

























BIRDS 



Character Reading in Beaks 




WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM BEAKS 

Birds may be said to “present their bills” for the same reason 
that people present bills—because they feel that somebody 
owes them something! In the case of the birds, they take the 
position that Mother Nature owes them a living, and it is with 
their bills that they help to collect it. The Pigeon (1) 
and the Eared Pheasant (8), have small weak beaks 
suitable for picking up seeds and the like. The 
birds of prey such as the Hawk (2) have strong 
curved beaks for tearing flesh. You can see 
that those weird creatures, the King Vulture 
(4), the California Vulture (5) and the Turkey 
Buzzard (10) are related to the hawks, but having feet unsuited 
to hold living prey, they feed on the decaying flesh of the dead. 
The Parrot (3) is related to the birds of prey, and certain 
parrots occasionally eat flesh; but ordinary parrots use their 
beaks for grinding up nuts and seeds almost to a powder before 
swallowing them. Even the wise men of Bird-dom 
don’t know just why the Toucans (9) should have 
immense beaks. Perhaps it is just a fancy of theirs 
The same is true of the fleshy knob on the beak of the 
Mute Swan (7) and the big black bump on 
the back of the head of the Maleo (6). The Maleo, of 
the Celebes Islands, like the Malee of Australia, does not 
sit on its eggs. Instead of building a nest the female, 
assisted by the male, digs a hole in the sand, in which 
it deposits its large eggs, filling up the hole and letting 
the sun do the rest. (See Eggs.) 


the 


_, and for a time the birds are unable to fly; but 

this is an exceptional form of molting. 

The summer molting season usually begins in 
August and continues through a part of September. 

This is the most difficult season of the year to study 
birds, because during the molt they stop singing, 
seek seclusion, and many species seem to disappear 
altogether. During this molt every bird changes 
every feather on its body, and most birds that 
have been brightly colored during the breeding 
season now assume sober colors, usually like 
those of the female. Thus the male of 
scarlet tanager, which during the summer 
is bright red with black wings and tail, 
now becomes green like the female, except 
that his wings and tail still remain darker than 
hers. During the spring molt, only such 
feathers are replaced by birds as are necessary 
to bring them into breeding colors. Thus 
the scarlet tanager does not shed its wing 
and tail feathers, for they are the same in 
both plumages. Birds which have the 
same color in winter as in summer usually 
do not have a spring molt, since the 
feathers are not yet sufficiently worn to make the 
physical strain of molting worth while. 

Some birds appear to change their colors without 
molting by a process called feather wear. This occurs 
only with such birds as have their new feathers edged 
with brown or gray; for these edges, by their over¬ 
lapping, conceal the underlying main color of the 
feather. Thus the rusty blackbird appears largely 
brown in its winter plumage, but as spring ap¬ 
proaches and the brown edges wear off, it gradually 
becomes blacker and blacker until, by the time 
the breeding season has arrived, its feathers are 
shiny black. Often some prominent mark is con¬ 
cealed in this way during the winter, as for example 
the black throat patch of the male house-sparrow. 
This appears as a narrow black spot beneath the bill 
all winter, but by May or June the gray edges of the 
feathers have worn off so the entire throat is black. 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alphabetical 


410 


place 


see information 
















The Albinos of Birdland 


birds! 


It is impossible to imagine a color that could not be 
matched by the plumage of some bird, but in spite of 
this fact there are only four pigments or color sub¬ 
stances found in the feathers of birds—black, brown, 
red, and yellow. In a small group of African birds 
called turacos, a green pigment also is present; but 
all other greens, and all blues and metallic colors, are 
due to the structure of the feathers rather than to pig¬ 
ments. It is usually the superficial layers of cells 
that are prismatic in shape and cause the refraction 


birds appear much redder than the nortnal colora¬ 
tion, irrespective of age or sex. This is well shown in 
the red and gray phases of the common screech owl 
and in certain other dull-colored species. 

When there is a difference in the coloration of the 
male and the female bird, it is usually the male 
that is brighter. Among North American birds, the 
phalaropes (a group similar to the sandpipers) are 
exceptions to this rule, the females being brighter 
than the males. It is interesting to note in this case 



HOW BIRDS PRACTICE CAMOUFLAGE 


You might wonder why those two Snow Buntings aren’t all white, but don’t you see how those dark patches of color would help 
them to blend in with a background of snow-covered bushes, so that a Hawk, for example, away up in the sky, couldn’t make 
them out at all? The Ptarmigan, just below, is all white because he sits directly on the snow. The Bittern, with his head straight 
up among the tall grass of a marsh, is easily confused with his surroundings; and the same is true of the blending of the Wood¬ 
cock’s markings and the dead leaves. The Screech Owl sitting in the daytime on a dead tree, looks to be a part of it, while the 
Whippoorwill crouching below seems a part of the mottled soil. 


that gives the color to the feather. To see the color at 
its best, therefore, the observer has to be in good light 
with the sun at his back. It is for this reason that a 
bluebird appears black when it is between one and 
the sun, and it is also for this reason that it is often 
difficult to identify the birds one sees under unfavor¬ 
able light conditions. 

Occasionally birds are seen whose feathers are 
deficient in pigment. There may be only a few white 
feathers in the plumage, or the entire bird may be 
spotted, or it may be entirely white. In the latter 
case it is said to be a pure albino. Albinism may 
occur in any species. In a few species the red pig¬ 
ment occasionally becomes overdeveloped and the 

contained in the Easy Reference 


that the males incubate the eggs and care for the 
young, while the females go off by themselves; for it 
is believed that the dull coloration of most females is 
due to the need for being inconspicuous on the nest. 
Added strength is given to this belief by the fact that 
in the families of birds that always nest in holes, 
notably the woodpeckers and kingfishers, the females 
are just as brilliant as the males. Being out of sight 
when incubating they do not need to be protectively 
colored. 

When the males and females are colored differently 
in the breeding season, the male in its winter plumage 
usually takes on a coat very similar to the female. 
It is for this reason that so few brilliantly colored 

act-index at the end of this work 











BIRDS 


The Different Classes of Birds 


birds are sden during the fall migration and during 
the winters spent in the south. 

When the male and female differ in color, the young 
birds in ju venal plumage usually resemble the female. If 
both sexes are alike, the young 
are similar, unless the adults 
differ in coloration materially 
from the other members of 
the family. In such cases the 
young often show the charac¬ 
teristics of the family. Thus 
young robins and bluebirds 
have the spotted breasts char¬ 
acteristic of the thrush family, 
and young field and chipping 
sparrows have the streaked 
breasts of the sparrow family, 
although the adults in both 
cases have unmarked under¬ 
parts. The juvenal plumage 
is usually lost after the first 
winter, in time for the first 
breeding season; but a few 
birds like the redstart and 
orchard oriole do not change 
until after the breeding sea¬ 
son. It is for this reason that 
one often sees individuals that 
seem to be females of these 
species singing, though they 
are in reality young males. 

Bird “Camouflage” 

When one begins the study 
of birds he very soon realizes 
that some birds are much 
more easily seen than others. 

He soon learns that certain 
birds, such as the tanagers 
and warblers, are quite con¬ 
spicuously marked; while 
others, for example the spar¬ 
rows and shore-birds, are pro¬ 
tectively colored. The con¬ 
spicuously marked birds are 
ordinarily shy birds and do 
not permit of very close ap¬ 
proach, while those that are 
protectively colored will often 
allow you almost to step on 
them before taking wing. 

This form of “camouflage” 
among birds is an interesting 
example of the manner in 
which Nature safeguards 
animals from their foes ( see 
Protective Coloration). 

There are today between 13,000 and 14,000 species 
of birds found in the world, of which 766 are found 
in North America north of Mexico. Before anyone 
can handle conveniently any such large group of 


objects or facts, it is necessary that they be systemati¬ 
cally arranged, and this arrangement is called classifi¬ 
cation. Just as the books in a library are classified 
and placed on shelves according to their contents and 

relationships, so in the classi¬ 
fication of birds—and indeed 
of all animals—the endeavor 
is made to put similar 
animals together in groups, 
and similar groups together 
in larger groups, etc. And 
just as in the library the 
books are not arranged 
according to their size or the 
color of their covers, so with 
birds—their classification is 
based upon their structure 
rather than upon external 
similarity. 

Beginning with the largest 
groups, we find that the animal 
kingdom is divided into a number 
of phyla (from the Greek word 
meaning “tribe”) or branches, of 
which the birds, together with the 
mammals, reptiles, amphibians, 
and fishes belong to the highest 
group, called Chordata, or back¬ 
boned animals, as opposed to the 
insects, mollusks, crustaceans, 
etc. Each phylum is divided 
into a number of classes, the 
birds belonging to the class Aves. 
Each class in turn is divided into 
a number of orders, and, accord¬ 
ing to the classification still in use 
in the United States, there are 17 
of these orders represented in 
North America, as given in the 
accompanying table. 

Some of these families are 
represented by only one or two 
species in North America, while 
others contain 40 or 50. In the 
larger families certain species 
are always more like each other 
than like the other members of 
the family, and so it has been 
found convenient to divide each 
family into genera (singular, 
genus). Thus in the thrush 
family we have a genus to include 
the various bluebirds, another to 
include the various robins, 
another to include the various 
thrushes, etc. 

A species has been defined as 
a group of individuals that 
resemble each other as the off¬ 
spring of a single parent, and 
would naturally be the smallest 
division necessary for all ordi¬ 
nary usage. However, in studies 
of the distribution of birds, it 
has been discovered that species 
of birds that have a wide range over the continent usually 
vary in different parts of their ranges, and, in order to 
show to which local race an individual bird belongs, it has 
been necessary to divide the species into sub-species or 
varieties. 


ORDERS OF AMERICAN BIRDS 

Order I. Pygopodes, or diving birds, including 
the grebes, loons, and auks. 

Order II. Longipennes, or long-winged sea 
birds, including the gulls, terns, jaegers, and 
skimmers. 

Order III. Tubinares, or tube-nosed sea birds, 
including the albatrosses and petrels. 

Order IV. Steganopodes, or yoke-toed water 
birds, including the gannets, pelicans, cor¬ 
morants, tropic birds and snake birds. 

Order V. Anseres, or waterfowl, including the 
ducks, geese, and swans. 

Order VI. Odontoglossae, or flamingoes, includ¬ 
ing only the flamingoes. 

Order VII. Herodiones, or wading birds, includ¬ 
ing the herons, storks, ibises, and spoonbills. 
Order VIII. Paludicolae, or marsh-birds, includ¬ 
ing the cranes, rails, coots, and gallinules. 
Order IX. Limicolae, or shore-birds, including 
the phalaropes, snipes, sandpipers, and 
plovers. 

Order X. Gallinae, or fowl-like birds, including the 
turkeys, grouse, bob-whites, and pheasants. 
Order XI. Columbae, or pigeons, including only 
the pigeons and doves. 

Order XII. Raptores, or birds of prey, including 
the hawks, owls, and vultures. 

Order XIII. Psitlaci, or parrots, including only 
the parrots and paroquets. 

Order XIV. Coccyges, or cuckoos and king¬ 
fishers, including only these birds. 

Order XV. Pici, or woodpeckers, including only 
the woodpeckers. 

Order XVI. Machrochires, or long-winged birds, 
including the night-hawks, whippoorwills, 
swifts, and humming-birds. 

Order XVII. Passeres, or perching birds, in¬ 
cluding all of the common birds not already 
enumerated, by far the largest number of 
any of the orders. 

Each of these orders is divided into a number 
of families. Thus the order Passeres, or perch¬ 
ing birds, is represented by 20 different families 
in North America, as given in the following table: 
Tyrannidae, or flycatchers; Alaudidae, or larks; 
Corvidae, or crows and jays; Sturnidae, or star¬ 
lings; Icteridae, or blackbirds, orioles, bobolinks, 
and meadow-larks; Fringillidae, or sparrows, 
finches, grosbeaks, and crossbills; Tangaridae, or 
tanagers; Hirundinidae, or swallows; Bombycil- 
lidae, or waxwings; Laniidae, or shrikes; Vireoni- 
dae, or vireos; Mniotiltidae, or wood warblers; 
Motacillidae, or wagtails and pipits; Mimidae, 
or thrashers, mocking birds, and catbirds; 
Troglodytidae, or wrens; Certhiidae, or creepers; 
Sittidae, or nuthatches; Paridae, or chickadees 
and titmice; Sylviidae, or kinglets and gnatcatch- 
ers; Turdidae, or thrushes. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical place see 

412 


Index 











LEADING FAMILIES Among Our BIRD PEOPLE 

VERY bird in the world belongs to a tribe, and each bird tribe or order has some 
peculiar structure of foot or beak or wing that distinguishes it from all others. 
Once you know these marks, birddom becomes a book of never-ending interest. 
These pictures are selected and arranged to bring out all the more 
important orders of our American birds with their distinguishing 
marks. The articles appearing on other pages 
under each bird’s name should also be consulted. 


BEGINNING with water birds, we see first 
the Pied-biiled Grebe or “Hell-diver” 
(Podilymbus podicepo), a far better swim¬ 
mer than any duck. Like a submarine it 
can float with its whole body showing, or 
sink until only its sharp eyes are visible. 
The Grebes belong to the order of diving 
birds ( Pygopodes ), which includes the 
Loon, the grotesque Puffin, the strange 
extinct Great Auk, and many others. All 
have stumpy legs and are very awkward 
on land. 




'THIS is the common Tern or "sea- 
A Swallow” ( Sterna hirundo ) that 
tells the fisherman where to 
cast his nets. Feeding on the 

small fry that are driven to the surface by their larger foes, 
the Terns gather in screaming thousands over passing schools 
of fish. In snatching their prey from the waves they rarely 
wet more than their heads and necks. The Terns belong 
to the order of long-winged swimmers (Longipennes), which 
comprises also the Gulls, the Jaegers, and the Skimmers. 


'J'HE solemn-looking bird below is the Brown Pelican ( Pele- 
x canus occidentals), bulky, powerful of wing, and a great 
fisherman. It flies low over the water, turning its head from 
side to side in the most comical manner, and plunging in like 
a stone when it sights a flash of silver near the surface. Its 
appetite is enormous, and when it can swallow no more, it 
fills the great pouch beneath its beak with fish to be eaten 
later at leisure or to be fed to its young. Often the Laughing 
Gull, a relative of the bird in the next corner, watches until 
the Pelican is struggling with a new-caught fish, then alights 
on its great beak and snatches the prey away. Pelicans 
frequently travel across country in regular wedge-shaped 
lines, beating their wings in perfect unison. The White 
Pelican is a more showy bird than the brown, and is commoner 
in northern regions. Pelicans are members of the order of 
yoke-toed swimmers ( Steganopodes ), which have all four 
toes joined by webs. The Gannets, the Darters or “Water 
Turkeys,” the Cormorants, and the Frigate-birds or “Man-o’- 
War” birds, also belong to this order. 


3 «* 


l 


T IKE all the Eng-visaed sv, In.mcrs {Longipennes), the Gulls 
■'■'are strong-beaked noisy creatures and are usually seen 
flying near the shores of sea or lake. The Herring Gull 
(Larus argentatus), shown here with its darker colored young, 
is one of the commonest of the Gull family. Besides fish, it 
also feeds on carrion or on any scraps of food thrown overboard 
by coastwise ships. It is the most familiar bird in large 
harbors, where it boldly flashes its brilliant white breast in 
the wake of churning vessels, or rides the choppy waves like 
a cork. It is a skilful opener of clams, dropping them again 
and again from high in the air to the hard beach, until the 
shells crack. 


I 

i 

I 














A LL sportsmen know the Mallard 
“Duck (Anas platyrhynchos), for 
it is the chief water-fowl of most 
wild duck preserves. The bright 
green head and vivid markings of 
the male make him a conspicuous 
figure on our northern water 
courses, but the female Mallard 
wears dusky brown and tawny 
plumage. Like all ducks, the 
Mallard has a round bill with saw¬ 
tooth edges, webbed feet, and an 
awkward waddling gait—the latter 
due to the fact that ducks’ feet, 
which are designed especially for 
swimming, are placed far back on 
the body. 



TJERE is an active little bird 
(Oxyechus vociferus) that 
helps us by eating harmful in¬ 
sects, such as mosquitoes, fever 
ticks, and weevils. It is called the Kill- 
deer because it keeps calling “Kill-dee, 
kill-dee,” in a loud shrill key. It is 
a Plover and belongs to the order of 
shore birds (Limicolae) whose slender 
legs are adapted to wading. It is often 
found running along plowed fields 
looking for worms. Snipes, Sand¬ 
pipers, and Curlews, Surf-birds, Stilts, 
and Avocets are all members .of this 
most interesting group of birds. 


(OCCASIONALLY this gorgeous bird is 
w seen stalking about in Florida. It is the 
Scarlet Flamingo ( Phoenicopterus ruber), 
and it is the only one of the Flamingoes 
(Odontoglossae) found in this country. Its 
clumsy-looking bill is really a contrivance 
for straining its food. The lower part is 
fitted with holes, so that when the bird 
reaches down and takes a billfu' of food- 
frogs and shellfish—from the mud, the dirt 
and water run out leaving its prey behind. 
For a nest the flamingo scrapes up a tall 
mound of mud out of the marsh, with a 
hole in the top in which to lay its one or 
two white eggs. 





'THIS dignified-looking bird is the Great Blue Heron ( Ardea 
A herodias herodias), and he is an expert fisherman. He 
stands motionless in the shallow water until he spies a frog 
or fish coming along, then like a flash his long neck straightens 
out and the luckless fish is caught in his swordlike bill. His 
long legs are well adapted to wading among the reeds along 
shore. Like most fishermen the Blue Heron usually prefers 
to be alone, but at nesting time he and his mate join a colony 
of Herons that may include as many as 150 nests. Other 
long-legged wading birds ( Herodiones ) are the Storks, Ibises, 
and Spoonbills. 


“gOB-WHITE’S” cheery note is one of the most familiar of 
bird-calls, for almost every farm has its covey of Quail 
(Colinus virginianus). These birds live in flocks and often 
sleep side by side in a circle on the ground. “Bob-White” 
is one of the fowl-like ground-dwelling birds ( Gallinae ), and 
he is well fitted for such a life. He can build a nest on the 
ground so cleverly that it cannot be found, while his brown 
plumage with its black and white markings enables him to 
flatten out in the dry grass or stubble and become almost 
invisible. 


414 






'J'HE peculiar quality of its call, which suggests both deep 
devotion and great sadness, has given to this bird ( Zenaidura 
macroura carolinensis) the name Mourning Dove. Like all 
pigeons and doves ( Columbae ), it has a small head, short neck, 
plump full-breasted body, and feet equally suited to walking 
on the ground and perching in trees. When it flies its wings 
seem to strike over its back, like those of our tame pigeons, 
making a sharp whistling sound at the same time. 


'T'HE above group of birds are called the Raptores, or birds of prey, because they live upon other birds and animals. They all 
have hooked bills, and toes arranged for tightly grasping their victims. The bird with widespread wings is the “Turkey Buzzard” 
(Cathartes aura septentrionales), and is really a species of vulture. It sees great distances and soars high in the air looking 
for food. Below is our national bird, the Bald Eagle ( Haliaetus leucocephalus), which loves the heights and nests in the top of 
tall trees; as it lives chiefly on fish, its home is never far from the water. A country cousin of the Eagle is the Sparrow Hawk 
(Falco sparverius) , which is shown opposite to the Turkey Buzzard. Unlike other Raptores, the Owls (which occupy the rest 
of the page) work at night. We have below the Barn Owl (Aluco pratincola) with its heart-shaped face and big ruff; and the 
round-faced Screech Owl (Otus asio) whose awesome wail is familiar to every country child. 


415 








'['HE Humming-bird needs strong wings, for 
it keeps flying while it sips the honey from 
flowers, its rapidly vibrating wings being 
almost invisible. Here are shown the male 
and female Ruby-throated Humming-birds 
(Archilochus colubris) gathering dandelion 
down to line a nest. The order to which 
Humming-birds belong is called Macrochires, 
because of the length of the terminal portion of their wings. Another member of the order (upper left) is the Night-hawk 
(Chordeiles virginianus) , which flies about at twilight catching insects and uttering loud cries. Like its relative, the Whippoorwill, 
it has a surprisingly large mouth, but is in no way a hawk. More familiar members of this order are the Chimney Swifts (upper 
right) (Chaetura pelagica )—often confused with the Swallows—that circle around the chimneys at bed time. Formerly these 
birds nested in hollow trees, but now they make their homes in tall chimneys. 


T HE Woodpecker’s rat-a-tat-tat is the forest rising bell. He clutches the side of a tree, braces himself with his stiff tail, then 
pounds with his head like a riveter, boring holes so that he can run his long tongue into the bark for grubs. The Flicker or 
Yellow-Hammer ( Colaptes auratus) is the friendliest of the woodpecker tribe (Pici). People also call it a “high-holder” because 
it often nests in the top of tall tree-stubs. The small Downy Woodpecker ( Dryobates pubescens), shown to the right, may be 
seen busily hopping up and down the trees in many of our northern villages and groves. To the left is the Yellow-bellied Sap- 
sucker (Sphyrapicus vanus), which drills numerous holes in the bark of trees for the sap which he thus gets. His tongue is not 
barbed like those of the other woodpeckers, but has a little brush on the end to wipe up the sap 


416 






TTNLIKE the European Cuckoo, 
the Yellow-billed Cuckoo of 
America ( Coccyzus americanus ) 
builds a nest of its own instead of 
laying its eggs in some other bird’s 
nest. It is a mysterious bird and 
goes slipping through the trees like 
a ghost. The call of the American 
Cuckoo is not at all like that of its 
European cousin, as represented by 
the musical note of the cuckoo 
clocks, but is rather a series of 
hoarse clucks. To the same 
order ( Coccyges ) belongs the hand¬ 
some crested Kingfisher, shown in 
the upper left-hand corner of this 
page. His skill as a fisherman 
commands admiration, for he can 
see a fish under water from a 
height of 50 feet and dive down and 
catch it. Usually he catches min¬ 
nows and other small fish which he 
can swallow whole, the fish going 
down head foremost. 


Most of our feathered 
friends belong to the order 
of perchers ( Passeres), the 
largest of all our bird 
groups. The distinguishing 
characteristic of the order 
as a whole is that the four 
toes are so arranged as to 
give unusual strength for 
grasping branches. The 
last four birds shown on 
this page and those on the 
three following pages all 
belong to this order. 


'J'HE Kingbird ( Tyrannus tyran- 
nus) is a fearless member of the 
above order, attacking hawks and 
crows with his bill, and even 
clinging to their backs, screaming 
loudly all the while. He is an ex¬ 
pert flycatcher and likes to perch 
at vantage points watching for in¬ 
sects; when he sees one, he darts 
for it, returning afterward to his 
post. 


'J'HE Red-winged Blackbird, who 
flaunts his gay plumage in the 
center of our page, belongs to the 
family of Icteridae. It nests in 
colonies in the rushes. While his 
more soberly clad mate sits on her 
nest of woven grasses, he swings 
on the cattails and reeds of our 
marshes and sings o-ka-lee, o-ka- 
lee at the top of his voice. 


'J'HE Starling is a naturalized citi— 
x zen, for the first of this family 
were brought to New York in 1890. 
Like the common European Star¬ 
ling ( Sturnidus vulgaris) the Amer¬ 
ican variety has long wings, a 
short square tail, and metallic 
glints in its plumage. It looks like 
a blackbird with a yellow bill. Its 
habits are similar to those of the 
English Sparrow, and already it is 
contesting the latter’s supremacy 
in many of our eastern cities. 


, T'HE Western States are the 
home of the Bullock Orioles 
(Icterus bullockf). Although they 
are especially fond of nesting in 
fruit trees near a house, they can 
usually be found in the poplars 
along the streams and irrigation 
ditches. The Oriole’s nest is a 
hanging one of horse-hair and 
fibers, so cleverly woven that it 
lasts from year to year, and even 
springs back into shape when 
pressed together. 


417 




COMEONE has aptly called the 
Bobolink ( Doiichonyx? oryzivorus ) 
—another of the Icteridae —the 
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” of 
birddom. In the spring he comes 
north in dashing black and white 
costume, ready to captivate all 
with his rollicking song as he flits 
about the meadows. But in the 
fall he dons a dull mottled garb 
and flies south to the rice fields 
where he does great damage to 
the ripening grain. 


Q UITE different is the Meadow¬ 
lark (Sturnella magna), a hand¬ 
some cheery bird of the best of 
habits which destroys many harm¬ 
ful insects. It lives in the open 
fields and builds its nest on the 
ground under a tuft of grass. It is 
quickly recognized in flight by the 
outer white tail feathers that flash 
in the air. On the ground the 
Meadow-lark neither hops nor runs: 
it is one of the few birds that walk. 
Its song is one of the sweetest of 
the bird-calls. 


/• 


JJVERYONE knows that street 
gamin, the English Sparrow 
(Passer domesticus). Although he 
was not brought to this country 
until 1850, he has succeeded in 
taking almost complete possession 
of our cities, driving out our native 
songbirds. He belongs to the larg¬ 
est of the bird families—the Fringil- 
lidae or Finches, all of which have 
strong cone-shaped bills, well 
suited to eating seeds. 


]^JUCH more lovable is the familiar 
Song Sparrow (Melospiza-melo- 
dia), a little roadside minstrel 
that perches on low bushes and 
fence posts, throws back his head, 
and pours forth the sweetest song. 
He has adapted himself to local 
conditions so well that his habits 
and appearance vary in different 
parts of the country, but he can 
always be told from other sparrows 
by the wedge-shaped streak of 
black and large spot on his breast. 


j^NOTHER member of the Finch 
family is the Rose-breasted Gros¬ 
beak ( Zamelodia ludoriciana), with 
his handsome black, white, and 
rose plumage, one of the loveliest 
of our summer visitors. He is 
retiring in habits and stays near 
his nest in the woods. He is a 
valuable aid to the farmer, in 
destroying quantities of potato 
bugs. 




ins^' 


^HE Black-headed Grosbeak 
(Zamelodia melanocephala) is 
the western cousin of the Rose¬ 
breasted Grosbeak. By eating 
scale insects he helps to save many 
an orchard crop on the Pacific 
coast. His happy song can be 
heard all day long. 


'pHE yellow plumage and sweet 
song of the Goldfinch (Astraga- 
linus tristis) have won for him the 
name “wild canary.” During the 
early summer he and his mate frolic 
over the fields and berry patches, 
and then gather grass and thistle¬ 
down for their home in some low 
bush. In autumn they gather in 
flocks to travel south for the 
winter. 


418 








JJERE are some more representa¬ 
tive families of the order Pas- 
seres. The Loggerhead Shrike or 
“Butcher-bird” (Lanius ludovici- 
annus), the first of the series, likes 
to perch on the top of a small tree, 
telegraph pole, or fence to watch 
for grasshoppers, snakes, and mice. 
When he has caught his food he 
impales it on a thorn to hold it 
while he is tearing it to pieces with 
his hooked bill. 


'J'HE Swallows all have short 
flat triangular bills, long strong 
wings, and tails that are either 
notched or forked, like the Barn 
Swallow (Hirundo erythogastra), 
which is here shown. Once the 
Barn Swallows nested in caves, but 
long ago they grew tame and 
learned to live about barns and 
sheds, thus getting the name 
“Barn Swallow.” They spend 
most of their time on the wing, 
catching insects and eating them 
as they fly. 

JNSECTS on the foliage of trees 
and shrubs furnish the food for 
this active little Red-eved Vireo 
(Vireosylva olivacea), shown just 
underneath the Barn Swallow. 
He is a persistent singer and keeps 
repeating his song from morning 
until night. Like others of the 
vireo family—whose name is Latin 
for “I am green”— he builds a 
beautiful hanging nest of finely 
woven grasses and fibers in the 
fork of a tree. 


THE trills and melodies of the 
Mocking-bird (Mimus poly- 
glottos) make the sweetest of sere¬ 
nades. Nothing is too difficult for 
this southern songster to attempt; a 
dog’s bark, bird-calls, and even 
the sounds of instruments are 
included in his repertoire, and he 
also has a love song all his own. 
He is the most accomplished 
singer of the mimicking birds 
(Mimidae ), among whom are in¬ 
cluded also the Catbird and Brown 
Thrasher. 


QCATTERED flocks of Pipits ( An - 
°thus rubescens) loiter in our pas¬ 
tures and plowed fields on their 
way south from their summer 
haunts in Canada. They like the 
open country and prefer wet fields 
and bogs. They are ground birds 
and run about looking for worms 
and insects. When frightened 
they fly into the air with great 
leaps, calling pipit, pipit. 

'PHIS mite of a bird is the fussy 
little House Wren ( Troglodytes 
aedon). Jenny Wren knows that 
she is an excellent housewife and 
flirts her tail with becoming pride. 
£.he will build her nest in any old 
can or basket that happens to be 
convenient, if it has an entrance 
small enough to keep other birds 
out. Her long curved bill, short 
wings, and pert tail are character¬ 
istic of the wren family, whose 
name Troglodytidae means “cave 
dwellers.” 


<<2 


I 


'THE Brown Creeper ( Certhia 
familiaris americana) —shown in 
the lower right-hand corner—is a 
quiet sort of a bird; and though he 
and his cousins the Nuthatches 
are classed as “song-birds” 
(Oscines ), because they have vocal 
organs, they are not real singers. 
They live on little insects which 
they find as they scramble inces¬ 
santly over the trunks and branches 
of trees. - 


419 




'THE White-breasted Nuthatch 
A (Sitta carolinensis), shown on the 
left, is supposed to get its name 
from its habit of wedging beech¬ 
nuts and other nuts in crevices 
of the bark and breaking them with 
its beak. It clings to the bark 
entirely with its claws, for its tail 
is too short and round to be used 
as a brace like the Woodpecker’s. 


^WINTER snow storm is an op¬ 
portunity for a romp for the 
cheery little Chickadee (to the 
right). Like the Nuthatch, the 
Chickadee ( Pentnestes atricapillus ) 
does not mind in the least being 
upside down as he goes poking 
over trees for insects. He dresses 
in plain dull colors, as do the other 
members of the Titmouse family. 


'J'HE Scarlet Tanager ( Piranga 
erythromelas) is a gay fellow who 
flashes through our woods in 
summer with such brilliance as to 
merit the name “Fire-bird” some¬ 
times given him. His mate, how¬ 
ever, is a modest creature in olive 
green, but resembling her husband 
in the blackness of her wings. The 
song resembles that of the robin. 
The Tanagers are an American 
family of Passeres, and are found 
from Canada to Argentina. 


J^OBIN Redbreast ( Planesticus 
migratorius) needs no introduc¬ 
tion, for he is the most familiar of 
our Thrushes. In the spring the 
children watch for him because he 
tells them that the winter is over. 
Be is such an affectionate fellow 
and seems to enjoy human society 
so much that we gladly forgive 
him for the cherries and other 
small fruits that he eats. 


JTS fondness for myrtle shrubs 
gives the bird shown beneath the 
Robin the name Myrtle Warbler 
(Dendroica coronata). It lives in 
the woods and hedges, where it 
hunts among the leaves for insects 
which are its food. The bright 
yellow patch above its tail distin¬ 
guishes it from the other Wood 
Warblers. They all have beautiful 
plumage in which yellow is the 
characteristic color, but they are 
especially known for their sweet 
caroling songs. 


'J'HE Horned Lark ( Octocoris 
alpestris) —shown in the lower 
left-hand corner—is the only mem¬ 
ber of the true Lark family (Alaudi- 
dae) which lives in North America. 
He loves the plains and deserts 
and his nest is built on the ground 
in pastures, often before the snow 
disappears. Like the rest of his 
family he is an excellent musician, 
and his jubilant song tells us what 
it means to be as “happy as a lark.” 


THE tiny sprite in the opposite cor¬ 
ner is the Ruby-crowned Kinglet 
(Regulus calendula), who is just 
as merry a winter bird as his play¬ 
mate the Chickadee. He is very 
proud of his bright crest which he 
can uncover when he wants to 
show it off. Indeed the kinglets 
(Sylviidae ) receive their name from 
this patch of bright color on the 
crown of their heads which 
brightens up their otherwise dull 
plrmage of olive, brown, and black. 
Ihey eat the seeds of weeds and 
poison ivy, as well as scale insects 
and other harmful pests. 


420 



The Doctor’s Bird Friends 


BIRDS 




WISE Doctor lives in a village in the 
Middle West, on the banks of a beautiful 
river, in the midst of a broad bird-haunted 
lawn and garden. He has the finest 
flowers, fruits, and vegetables in the town, although 
he never seems to take any more pains with them 
than his neighbors. People say he is lucky and has 
the “ knack” of growing things, but the Doctor only 
smiles and says: 

“I have all of my little feathered friends to help 
me.” Few people understand just what he means 
by this. 

As the years have gone by and the song birds— 
which are insect eaters—have become fewer, the 
Doctor’s grounds are almost the only place in town 
where many of them nest. This is because he always 
has numbers of houses for them to build their nests 
in and rear their young, and also little shelves or 
“invitations to nest,” as the Doctor calls them. 
These latter are placed under the eaves, in the tree- 
tops, and five or six feet high in the shrubbery, for 
birds that would not build in a house—such as the 
Robins, Orioles, Catbirds, Scarlet Tanagers, Thrushes, 
Cardinals, and Grosbeaks. Shelters are also put out 
where the birds can find refuge in advance of and 
during early and late storms, and they are always 
kept stocked with a special balanced grain mixture, 
suet and suet cake, so the birds know they can always 
find food and shelter in the Doctor’s grounds. While 


How pleasant the life of a bird must be. 

Flitting about on each leafy tree! 

“Come up! come up!" they seem to say, 

Where the topmost twigs in the hedges stray. 

“Come up! come up! for the world is fair 
Where the merry leaves dance in the summer air." 

And the birds below give back the cry, 

“We come! we come! to the branches high.” 

How pleasant the life of a bird must be. 

Living in love in a leafy tree! 

And away through the air what joy to go. 

And to look on the green, bright earth below! 

— M. Ifowitt, *Birds in Summer . 

the birds do not always patronize these shelters in 
the summer-time, they will fly for miles in times of 
stress to the Doctor’s feeding stations, knowing that 
food and shelter will always be there for them. Bird 
baths also are kept full of fresh cool water in the 
summer-time and warm water in the winter-time; 
and building material is put out in the crotches of the 
trees and in the shrubbery. This consists of string 
or twine cut into six-inch lengths, or perhaps an old 
gunny or potato sack, cut in six-inch squares and 
tacked up in out-of-the-way places where it will not 
be unsightly, and yet where the birds’ bright eyes 
can find it and ravel it out. A pan of mud is also 
placed in or behind the shrubbery, so that birds such 
as the Robin, Catbird, Brown Thrasher and Redbird, 
which cement their nests together, can dip the string 
or jute into the mud and carry it to their nests and 
cement it into place. Having attracted the birds to 
his garden and grounds, the Doctor keeps a sharp 
lookout for cats or other enemies which might come 
into his sanctuary to frighten or kill his pets. 

Everything that the birds want the Doctor gives 
them. He seems to know their tiny minds better even 
than they do themselves. He listens to their songs 
and twitterings and can tell when something is making 
them unhappy. If his little guests quarrel among 
themselves—and even the best-behaved birds will 
sometimes quarrel—he has a way of settling the diffi¬ 
culty. Perhaps a stranger has arrived in the colony, 
and has picked out some other bird’s pet roosting 
place, or perhaps the fight has started at dinner time 
around a feed-box. In any case, the Doctor usually 
finds a way to patch up the trouble, for he knows the 
birds “by heart.” 


For any subject 


not found in its 

421 


alp ha betical 


place see 


Index 











BIRDS 


Robin’s Song of Cheer 



And in return for all these things, the birds act as 
policemen for the Doctor’s garden. Let so much as a 
single caterpillar poke his nose through the hedge, and 
he is a “goner.” And music! Well, the Doctor has 
music the whole day long. 

Sunrise Concert on the Porch 

The dearest treat the Doctor can give to the boys 
and girls of his acquaintance is to invite a few of 
them at a time to a sunrise concert on his vine- 
covered side porch. There, as still 
as mice, they listen to the bird songs, 
look through the Doctor’s big field- 
glass, and watch the happy singers 
at work or play. Now and then the 
quietest child of all is allowed to 
peep into what the Doctor calls his 
“observation house”—which is a 
birdhouse with a glass side covered 
with a wooden door—and look at 
Mama Bluebird sitting on her eggs. 

The Doctor is never quite sure 
which of his little friends in feathers 
arrives first in the spring—the Blue¬ 
bird, the Song Sparrow, or Phoebe. 

Some morning in March, often before 
the snow is off the ground, he will be 
awakened by a “ pewit-pewee!” 
before his window. There he will see 
a seven-inch-long, cream-breasted, 
black-billed Phoebe, fluttering about the leafless 
vines of the porch, singing her friendly greeting of 
just four notes. From under the lilac and syringa 
bushes he is sure to hear, about the same time, a 
“tweet, tweet, twittering,” for all the world as if 
someone’s pet canary bird had escaped from its cage. 
That is Mr. Song Sparrow, gray-brown of back and 
wings, speckle-breasted, busy and cheerful, stopping 
every now and then to twitter and trill from some 
low perch. But the Doctor is apt to see the Bluebird 
first, because of its bright color. 

First Arrivals in the Spring 

Pretty Mr. Bluebird comes all alone. His sweet 
solo is something like this: “Here I am; all alone. 
Oh-oh-I-oh, pu-ri-ty, cher-ish me!” It is the loveliest 
melody, a little bit sad, until his mate joins him a 
week or two later. Mrs. Bluebird has the same 
colors, but they are not so bright. That is the rule 
in the bird world, as the mother bird must not be 
conspicuous when on the nest. Papa wears the 
gayest coat and sings the finest song. 

Then Mr. Robin comes welcoming his mate with a 
happy mellow song. “Chirp, chirp,” she answers 
faintly from the grass: “I’m rather tired from the 
long journey, dear.” “Oh, cheer-up, cheer-up,” he 
answers. Down he drops to her side and perks his 
knowing head to this side and that, as if to say: 
“I think I hear a worm!” Suddenly he stabs the 
ground with his bill, braces his stout legs, gives a 
jerk—and up comes a fat earthworm for Mrs. Robin’s 
breakfast. 


If the Doctor hadn’t kept a cow and had a pasture 
lot for her, with a pond in it, he wouldn’t have had 
some of the red-winged Blackbirds nesting near him. 
In the cattails and rushes about the pond there was 
always a colony of these beautiful birds. They 
strutted and danced and jumped and whistled, 
“Bob-o-lee! Bob-o-lee!” Often a gay flash of black 
and white, with a yellow patch on the back of the 
neck, tumbled up out of the meadow onto the hedge. 

The Doctor’s little friends had no 
trouble guessing the name of this 
jolly chap, for he sang his name over 
and over, “Bob-o-link! Bob-o-link! 
Spink, Spank, Spink!” as he flew 
from one rest to another. The 
Bobolink, the Doctor told them, is 
one of the few birds that sing as 
they fly. The Oriole is a cousin of 
the Blackbirds as you might guess 
from his velvet black wings and 
tail, and his flute-like whistle. He 
will not build in a house, however, 
but insists on building a hanging 
nest far out on a swaying limb, 
safe from any prowling cat. 

The Sweet Singer of the Meadows 
But oh, the Meadow-Lark, that 
nests in the pasture! This little 
brown-backed and spotted-yellow¬ 
breasted singer, with the necklace of jet and white- 
tipped tail, is the best singer of our grasslands. 
When you walk along the edge of a clover field he 
may spring up at your feet, perch on a fence or 
bush, and pour out a melody like flutes and violins 
and human voices in vesper hymns. He is not a 
true lark, however, but a cousin of the Blackbirds, 
the Orioles, and Bobolinks. He walks like the Black¬ 
birds. He comes in April and sings all summer long, 
on the ground, on perches, and on the wing. He is 
one of the very greatest of bird singers, rivaled only 
by the Cardinal Grosbeak, Mocking-Bird, Night¬ 
ingale, and the Brown and Wood Thrushes. 

There was rivalry among the children as to who 
should first spy the Scarlet Tanager in the Doctor’s 
garden. A flash of scarlet flame across an open space, 
and the Tanager was gone! This glowing coal of a 
bird, with scarlet breast and black velvet wings and 
tail, really belongs to a tropical family. He seems as 
strange among our wild birds as an orchid in a mead¬ 
ow. He flits about in silent places, singing a lovely 
little chant, as sad as the Dove’s but of varied melody. 
To his mate, who dresses soberly in dull olive and 
yellow, he sings a low, sweet warble. Very soon he 
too takes off his scarlet and black coat, that attracts 
far too much attention, and wears a quiet working 
dress. So, if you see the Tanager in his dress of flame 
and soot, it must be in the spring or early summer. 

Bird Families that Sing Best 
The finest singers of America are Thrushes, Black¬ 
birds, and Finches. The Finches all have the canary 


AT THE DINNER TABLE 



This is a simple feeding device that is 
very popular with little birds—a plat¬ 
form nailed to the top of a post with 
a frame to support a shady branch 
laid over it. 


For any subject not found in it, alphabetical place see information 

422 








twittering song; the Blackbirds, the whistling bub¬ 
bling notes. The songs of the Thrushes are pure rich 
flute melody, and many of them mock the songs of 
the Warblers, the Finches, and the Blackbirds. 
Another sweet singer of the Finch family 
is a snow-white-and-dead-black short¬ 
billed bird, with patches of lovely rose 
color on the breast and under the wings; 
it is the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The 
Cardinal Grosbeak, or Virginia Nightin¬ 
gale, is the sweetest singer of them all. 

The eaves of the Doctor’s barn was a 
great place for Barn-Swallows. A big 
colony of them skimmed and wheeled 
about, the sun glistening on their irides¬ 
cent blue-black forked wings and tails. 

They chattered, scolded intruders, and 
sang sweet gossipy songs to each other. 

The Wrens came right up to the house and 
sang from the roof, the low bushes, and 
the ground. Bill up, perky tail, jerking 
about, the merry singer is a nervous 
little bird and scolds at times. “Five 
inches of brown fury in feathers,” the 
Doctor called Mrs. Jennie Wren. She 
scolded everybody about the place. She 
even scolded Mr. Blue Jay. He didn’t 
get to come near her house. Plucky 
little Mama Wren! She is the grittiest little darling 
of the whole bird-world. 

The King-Bird is as trim as you please in a coat of 
iron gray, a pearl bib, and an 
orange-red patch on his head. 

He cries in a series of shrill harsh 
sounds, “thsee-thsee-thsee!” He 
is a cousin of the Phoebe and the 
Wood-Pewee, belonging to the 
Flycatcher family. The great 
Crested Flycatcher is the most 
interesting of this family, for when 
its nest is finished it always finds 
a snake skin, which it winds in 
the inner lining, hanging the tail 
outside of its house to frighten 
the other birds and keep them 
away. Old Redhead, the dark- 
blue, black and white Woodpecker, 
with his red hood, just chuckles 
and utters a loud whining “chaw, 
chaw,” besides other calls and imi¬ 
tations. His cousin the Flicker, 
or golden-winged Woodpecker, 
known by several other names in 
different localities, laughs and 
chatters, drums, and plays tag 
around the tree trunks. You can 
always know the Woodpeckers by 
their drumming, the big black Crows by their cawing, 
the scary-eyed Owls by their who-who-ing and the 
Doves by their melodious mourning. 


Ever so many more birds are to be seen in the 
Doctor’s home grounds, as more than a hundred 
different kinds of song birds visit him every summer. 
Many of them also stay with him all winter, such as 
the Junco, Tohee, Chickadee, Nuthatch, 
the Downy and Hairy Woodpecker, and 
even the beautiful Cardinal Grosbeak will 
not migrate if they can find food and 
shelter. The Nuthatch is the little bird 
that gets the wax from the peach or cherry 
trees, and sticks it all around the opening 
of its house; it knows the wax is there 
and can avoid it, while any other birds 
will get stuck in it, if they try to enter. 
Most of the birds named belong to the 
families of the Thrushes and Finches, 
the Blackbirds, the Wrens, Swallows, 
Woodpeckers, Flycatchers, and the little 
Warblers. You can tell what family a bird 
belongs to by its song and its food habits, 
more than by its colors or its nest. How 
many of the Doctor’s birds do you know? 
The Boys and the Nest Building Party 
One spring day each year the Doctor 
has a nest-building party. The boys bring 
houses of all shapes and sizes and empty 
boxes, ready to convert into houses and 
shelters. 

“When our country was new,” the Doctor tells 
them, “and dead timber was not cut away nor old 
limbs trimmed from the trees, our feathered friends 
had no trouble in finding nest¬ 
ing places, but now this is all 
changed. So if we want to have 
birds for neighbors, we must put 
up houses and sheltered shelves 
in which they can build their 
nests and rear their young.” 

The Doctor has to b6 consulted 
very often, for even the openings 
of the boxes or houses must be 
made just the right size for the 
particular kind of bird the house 
is intended for. If the opening 
is made too large, the Doctor 
shows the boys how to make it 
smaller by placing a piece of 
wood over it with a smaller open¬ 
ing. He explains that when Mrs. 
Wren fills her box with sticks 
she leaves an opening for the 
nest at the lower side of the 
back of the house, with only a 
little tunnel passage leading to it, 
so that even the far-reaching paw 
of a cat cannot get the baby 
birds. 

“Cats take a terrible toll from our song birds,” 
says the Doctor. “Every cat will catch at least 
50 song birds every year, so you must choose 


HELPING THE NEST 
BUILDERS 



A handful of wool or cot¬ 
ton placed on a conven¬ 
ient branch is much ap¬ 
preciated by birds at 
nest-building time. This 
Yellow Warbler is gather¬ 
ing a tuft for her nest. 


THIS STOPS THE CATS 



With a simple device like this around a tree 
in which there are bird nests, your little 
neighbors are safe from cats and other 
climbing enemies. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

423 






BIRDS 


Dividing Up the Good Work 


between the cats and the song birds. One can’t 
have both.” 

The Bluebirds’ houses are fitted with hinged 
bottoms so that the house can be easily cleaned out 
after the birds have left. 

Perches are put on below the 
openings; then, to keep them 
from warping apart in wet 
weather, the boxes are wound 
round and round with wire or 
hoop iron. For the Wood¬ 
peckers, there are sections of 
tree limbs, which the Doctor 
showed the boys how to saw 
open and hollow out, leaving 
only a knotlike hole for an 
entrance. The Doctor explains 
that the cavity must be bell¬ 
shaped and at least 10% inches 
deep. 

“The birds will finish the 
job,” says he, “when we nail 
it to a tree trunk. Their sharp 
beaks are especially suited to 
that very task.” 

A big soap-box is made into 
a Martin house. It has door¬ 
ways cut in each side; then it 
is divided into compartments 
and furnished with a good strong platform, for it is 
to be mounted on a high pole and must be substantial 
enough to stand through heavy winds. It has to 
be carefully ventilated without draft, for the house 
being out in the open sunlight will 
get terribly hot, and if it is not prop¬ 
erly ventilated the young birds will 
suffocate. 

“The Martin,” says the Doctor, 

“is one of the most valuable birds 
that we have. Its food consists 
almost entirely of flying insects, the 
chief of which is the mosquito. One 
Purple Martin will catch and con¬ 
sume an average of 2,000 mosquitoes 
in a day, besides gnats, flies, and 
other insects.” 

Birds Have Tastes about Houses 

Some of the boys make fancy 
painted houses from odd bits of wood. 

“We can’t have too many,” the 
Doctor says, “as we must give the 
birds an opportunity to select a 
location to their liking. All of our 
song birds raise two broods each year, 
and most of them three, and they never occupy the 
same compartment the second time the same season. 
All houses should have more than one compartment, 
for it is necessary for them to start their second nest 
before their young can fly, and thus they can simply 
move from one compartment to another.” 


A PRETTY COTTAGE FOR TWO 



Who wouldn’t want to be a bird and go to house¬ 
keeping if one could have a beautiful little cottage 
like this? “When the wind blows the cradle will 
rock,” just as it says in the song. 


Finally the boys climb into the loft of the Doctor’s 
barn and fit a big box against the window where the 
Barn Owls pass in and out. The Doctor explains 
that the Barn Owl is very useful to man, as its food 
consists almost entirely of mice, 
moles, reptiles, and insects. 
The young of the owls stay in 
the nest a long time and require 
great quantities of food. 

The Boy and His Air Rifle 
One sunny afternoon in June, 
a tanned dusty-legged boy 
came to the Doctor’s side porch. 
In one hand he had a soft limp 
bundle of white and black and 
rose-colored feathers. In the 
other he carried an air rifle. 
A shamefaced lad he was, for 
not a boy in town would 
purposely kill one of the 
Doctor’s birds. He had just 
aimed at the beautiful singer 
on the fence of the vegetable 
garden. When scolded by the 
Doctor, he said: “But perhaps 
you don’t know that this bird 
was eating your green peas. 

I saw him.” 

“Let me see,” said the 
Doctor. He opened the little crop under the rose 
spot on the breast that would throb with song no 
more. The crop and the stomach were packed full 
of “potato bugs” that were eating all the potato 


A WIRE FOOD PROTECTOR 



Wire screening fastened in this way 
serves to hold both food and nesting 
material. This little cage contains 
suet. It is protected from crows and 
squirrels, but this little Brown 
Creeper has no trouble in getting at it. 


plants in the town. 

Out on the picket fence the mother 
Grosbeak had all her babies in a row 
and was feeding them the beetles. 
Black-headed Grosbeaks were there 
too. In a few days the Doctor’s 
potato plants were picked clean, and 
the birds were foraging in near-by 
gardens. 

“I have found,” the Doctor said, 
“that each kind of bird has its special 
work to do. Woodpeckers go under 
the bark of forest trees for wood¬ 
boring beetles and grubs. The 
Cuckoo or Rain-Crow eats hairy 
caterpillars; the only other birds that 
can manage these are the Orioles. 
The Robins clear our lawns; the 
Bluebirds, Catbirds, and Cedar-Birds 
forage in the orchards. The Wood 
Thrushes and Flickers feed on the 
ground, taking thousands of ants every day. The 
Meadow-Larks, Bobolinks, and Red-winged Black¬ 
birds hunt in the pastures and swamps. The Swal¬ 
lows, the King-Birds, the Phoebes, and other 
Flycatchers are raiders of the air. Wrens forage 
in low plants, shrubs, and in cracks and crannies 


For any ,abject not found in it, alphabetical place ,ee information 

424 






HOW TO MAKE OUR FEATHERED GUESTS HAPPY 



Gourd houses for 
Martins, Such as 
those the Indians Put Up 


Purple Martins PreferTrauses with Porches 
and Good Ventilation 


Tomato Can Houses which 
Suit Either Bluebirds or Wrens 


A Birch-Bark house 
for Bluebirds 


Start the Nest Like This and 
the Flicker Will Finish It 


Gourd Houses 
for Wrens or 
Bluebirds 


handsome 

Flicker 

Residence 


Bark Houses for Flickers 
Bl uebirds, and Wrens 


Air Spaces 
to Keep the 
Birdies Cool 


A One-Room house 
for Bluebirds 


In the beautiful 


Our little feathered friends are as eager to neighbor with us as we are to have them; but they have special tastes, 
little Flicker home with the pointed roof you must put some chips and saw-dust, so that when Mr. and Mrs. Flicker see the apart 
ment they will think they dug it out themselves. Adjoining this Flicker mansion—which in addition to being so handsome is )us 
“s deep as the Flicker house should be (10J4 inches)-well ventilated and without draft-is a Flicker house that you could make 
next one for a bluebird: and further on a wren house. Bluebirds will build in a one-roomed house, but a house with more com 
partments is much better, since they raise three broods a year and take a new apartment for each brood. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

425 

























BIRDS 


BIRMINGHAM, ALA. 



of house walls and fences. Hawks and Owls hunt 
mice and moles. In August all the insect-eating 
birds make a feast of grasshoppers. One brood of 
Robins eats half a million insects and larvae in a 
summer and not a thousand cherries. If fresh water 
is kept where the birds can drink and bathe, they will 
not eat the cherries. 

How the Birds Helped Keep Down Weeds 

“Among the useful seed-eaters,” he continued, 
“are Doves, Pigeons, and native Sparrows, and the 
Goldfinches, or Wild Canaries. Mourning Doves 
eat the seeds of weeds and the gleanings of grain 
fields. Two-thirds of the food of our native Sparrows 
in summer is insects, the other third is made up of 
the hard seeds of grasses and weeds. The Goldfinches 
eat weed and thistle seeds and berries which grow on 
the shrubs. A very useful bird on a farm is the Quail 
(Bob-White or Partridge). Two-thirds of its food is 
weed seeds, the rest harmful insects, and waste grain. 
The English Sparrow is a pest. It lives in flocks, is 
dirty, noisy and quarrelsome, fights all of our song 
birds, tears up their nests, breaks their eggs and kills 
their young. It drives away our song birds, and 
lives on us all the year around, eating its weight in 
grain every day. It is the ‘ rat of the air’ and should 
be treated as such. Sparrows are good to eat; 
sparrow pie is a most delicious dish and has often 
been mistaken for squab pie.” 

How Nature Punished Men for Killing Birds 

For many, many years scattered bird-lovers told 
their neighbors such things as these that the Doctor 
told the children. Some of them were laughed at; 
others only half believed. The song birds became 
fewer and fewer. Their nests were robbed, the 
singers killed for their pretty wings. The farmers 
shot the birds and drove them away. We began to 
have wormy orchard fruits, army worms, canker and 
cutworms, tent-caterpillars, boring weevils, flies, 
plagues of grasshoppers and Colorado beetles. 
Countless unseen enemies ate up the farm crops, 
orchards, and gardens, and even the grass on the 
lawns. We looked everywhere for help except in 
the air. 

Then in different States bird-lovers banded together 
to arouse public interest in the protection of birds 
and named their societies after the great bird-lover 
and naturalist, John James Audubon. These socie¬ 
ties furnished newspapers with information about the 
value of birds; they printed leaflets for use in the 
public schools; they sent out lecturers, and they made 
special effort to interest in their work the men who 
made our laws. 

Laws Made to Protect the Birds 

And so it came about that our state and national 
governments began to study our bird friends. Laws 
protecting game birds had already been passed by 
most States. Now laws protecting the large group 
of non-game birds began to be made by the different 
States to protect their bird citizens, and powerful 
influences were exerted to discourage or forbid the 


lllphS3j^[ 

slaying of birds for millinery ornaments. Best of all, 
a federal migratory bird law was passed in 1913, 
which placed under the care and protection of the 
United States government all Wild Geese, Wild Ducks, 
Wild Swans, Snipe, Plover, Woodcock, Rail, Wild 
Pigeons, and all other migratory and insect-eating 
birds which did not remain permanently in any state 
or territory. This law makes it a crime to kill such 
birds at any time except in the case of game birds, 
which may be shot during a period of 33^ months 
after the nesting season is over and the young birds 
are able to care for themselves. 

By a treaty with Great Britain, birds passing be¬ 
tween Canada and the United States are protected 
in the same way. These protective laws do away 
with many tragedies in the bird world. Now if 
baby birds starve in the nest or cry themselves to 
death waiting for the mother who never comes, we 
may blame the cat or an accident. 

Uncle Sam’s Refuges for Birds 

But bird lovers have been working for more than 
laws. The bird societies, especially the Audubon 
Society, with its branches in almost every State, 
have induced the government to set aside special 
places for reservations where birds may nest and 
live undisturbed by human neighbors. The first 
such bird reservation was Pelican Island, in the 
Indian River, Florida, set aside by President Roose¬ 
velt in 1903. Many other places of little use to man, 
but especially suited for bird reserves, have been set 
aside in the same way; until now there are more than 
70 bird reserves in the United States, scattered from 
Florida to the delta of the Yukon in Alaska, and 
including one of the Hawaiian Islands. 

There are community bird refuges too. One at 
Meriden, N. H., is a tract of 32 acres owned by the 
Meriden Bird Club; the whole town helps in feeding 
their feathered pensioners and in furnishing houses 
and nesting sites for them. Another is “Bird-craft 
Sanctuary,” a ten-acre tract at Fairfield, Conn. 

“This is your Bird Sanctuary,” said one little 
listener, as the Doctor finished telling about his 
work. 

“Yes,” answered the Doctor, “this is a real bird 
sanctuary, and with a little effort and care we can 
make every garden a bird sanctuary. In the sum¬ 
mer, help them with their nests and give them plenty 
of water; in the winter give them plenty of food and 
shelter; and always, in summer and in winter, give 
them protection. Remember the Bird Lore motto, 
‘A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand!’ ” 
Birmingham, Ala. One of the most striking ex¬ 
amples of the industrial development of the new 
South is the growth of Birmingham. Within a gea- 
eration, from a little town of 3,000 inhabitants, it has 
grown to be “the Pittsburgh of the South” and one 
of the leading centers of the iron and coal industry 
in the country. 

The city itself is built partly on the slope of Red 
Mountain, so named from its outcrop of red hema- 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

426 







[BIRMINGHAM,ENGLAND 

tite iron ore. For many miles this iron ore extends 
in every direction from the city, in a vein from 6 to 
26 feet thick and of indefinite depth. Birmingham is 
also the heart of the coal and limestone district of the 
South. Everything necessary for an almost unlim¬ 
ited production of steel at the lowest cost is, there¬ 
fore, right at hand, and these conditions are building 
up a great city with a rapidity unparalleled except 
by Chicago. 

The Birmingham district contains 50 blast fur¬ 
naces and more than half the iron smelters in the 
state, ranking fourth in the world in the production 
of iron. It has the largest basic open-hearth plant 
in the world, except the Carnegie works at Home¬ 
stead. Other plants and factories include rolling 
mills, ship-plate mills, foundries, pipe plants, clay¬ 
working plants, cement plants, gas engine works, 
iron and steel bridge works, and planing mills. Bir¬ 
mingham is the second largest shipping point for 
yellow pine in the South, and is an important cotton 
market. 

Birmingham is a city of wide streets and hand¬ 
some residences. In the business district are many 
imposing steel construction buildings, and there are 
several public parks. 

The city is the hub of a group of cities and towns 
built up by identical interests. A number of these 
have been incorporated under the name of Greater 
Birmingham. The town was not founded until 
1871, following the discovery of the deposits of coal, 
iron ore, and limestone. A company bought a tract 
of land to develop the coal and iron industry and 
named the settlement Birmingham, after the English 
manufacturing city. Population, about 180,000. 
BIRMINGHAM, England. In almost the center of 
England, 113 miles northwest of London, lies Bir¬ 
mingham, one of the greatest metal-manufacturing 
cities in the world, and the metropolis of England’s 
industrial district. The town was in existence before 
the Norman Conquest and the manufactures of the 
city date at least from the early 16th century, as 
evidenced by Leland’s ‘Itinerary’ (1538), in which he 
writes of Birmingham: “There be many smithes in 
the towne that use to make knives and all manner of 
cutlery tooles, and many lorimers that make bittes 
(for boring), and a great many naylors (nail makers) 
so that a great part of the towne is maintained by 
smithes, who have their iron and sea-cole (ordinary 
coal) out of Staffordshire.” 

Toward the close of the 17th century Birmingham 
had gained wide importance as a manufacturing city, 
due in large part to the extensive coal and iron beds 
with which it is surrounded. The leading industry 
today of the district of which Birmingham is the 
center is metal-working of all sorts—founding, rolling, 
stamping, plating, drawing, etc.—and the products 
include machinery, engines, iron roofs, girders, and 
all sorts of industrial wares. The manufacture of 
railway carriages is an extensive industry, and Bir¬ 
mingham is one of Great Britain’s chief centers for 


the manufacture of automobiles, tires, and acces¬ 
sories. Small arms, watches and clocks, electrical 
apparatus, brass works of all sorts, gold and silver 
articles and jewelry, screws and nails, and steel pens 
are manufactured in quantities, and buttons, hooks 
and eyes, pins, etc., also constitute a large class of 
articles produced. Near Birmingham the steam- 
engine was perfected by James Watt and Matthew 
Boulton, and the memory of their famous Soho fac¬ 
tory is one of the most precious heritages of the town. 
Population, about 860,000. 

BISMARCK, Otto von (1815-1898). Three men sat 
about a table in the house of the imperial chancellor 
in Berlin. Although the table was filled with good 
things to eat, the men made little pretense at eating, 
for they were all nervously awaiting a dispatch from 
their king, William I of Prussia, who was at Ems. 
The French ambassador had sought an interview with 
him there and on its outcome might hang the issue 
of peace or war. 

Presently a servant entered bearing the looked-for 
message. He handed it to Bismarck, the master of 
the house, who read it to his two guests—General 
von Moltke, the chief of the Prussian army staff, and 
General von Roon, the minister of war. 

In telling of the incident afterwards, Bismarck said: 
“As I read the dispatch to them, they were both 
actually terrified, and Moltke’s whole being suddenly 
changed. He seemed to be quite old and infirm. It 
looked as if our most gracious majesty might knuckle 
under after all. I asked him (Moltke) if, as things 
stood, we might hope to be victorious. On his reply¬ 
ing in the affirmative, I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and 
seating myself at a small table, I boiled down those 
200 words to about 20, but without otherwise alter¬ 
ing or adding anything. It was the same telegram, 
yet something different—shorter, more determined, 
less dubious. Then I handed it over to them, and 
asked, ‘Well, how does that do now?’ ‘Yes,’ they 
said, ‘it will do in that form!’ And Moltke immedi¬ 
ately became quite young and fresh again. He had 
got his war, his trade.” 

France Tricked into War 

The dispatch, thus altered, was interpreted in the 
press to mean that the king had been insulted and 
had snubbed the French envoy—which was not the 
case. In both Berlin and Paris the war spirit rose 
to fever heat, and on July 19, 1870, France declared 
war. Thus by trickery Bismarck, with his policy of 
“blood and iron” and his disbelief in democracy and 
‘ ‘ speeches and maj ority votes, ’ ’ became the real founder 
of that German Empire which again plunged the 
world into war in 1914. 

By birth and tradition Bismarck was a member of 
the conservative German “Junkers” or landed aris¬ 
tocracy. At school he had spent more time in fight¬ 
ing than in studying, and when he lived on his estate 
his neighbors called him the “crazy” Bismarck 
because of his reckless actions. But all this changed 
when he began his long public career. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

427 






BISMARCK 


BISON 



He once said: “From the beginning of my career, 
I have had but one guiding star: by what means and 
in what way can I bring Germany to unity.” He 
early saw that Austria was the real obstacle in Prussia’s 
way, and so he set about humiliating her. When he 
first entered the Frankfort Diet as the representative 
of the king of Prussia, only the Austrian representa¬ 
tive smoked. Bismarck, wishing to show the im¬ 
portance of his own country, immediately began to 
smoke. At first the delegates from the other German 
states were horrified, but they soon followed his 
example, and Austria lost this mark of superiority. 

Building Up the War Machine 

Bismarck recognized that Prussia must become a 
great military power if it would defeat Austria. So 
he set to work to secure a reorganization of the 
Prussian army. To accomplish this, for four years 
he was obliged to wage an unceasing conflict with 
the Prussian legislature, which refused to vote the 
necessary funds. His first chance to use his reor¬ 
ganized army came in 1864. In that year a war was 
successfully waged by Austria and Prussia against 
Denmark for the possession of the two little provinces 
of Schleswig and Holstein. As a result of the war 
the duchies came temporarily under the control of 
the victors. Then Bismarck unscrupulously picked 
a quarrel with Austria over the management of the 
spoils. Within seven weeks Austria was completely 
defeated and Prussia stood forth the all-powerful 
leader of Germany. 

Although Austria was given a liberal peace, she 
was forced to consent to a reorganization of Germany 
in which she was not included. For a time this new 
organization took the form of a North German Con¬ 
federation. When Bismarck tricked France into 
declaring war, as described above, the South German 
states joined Prussia, and after one of the most 
humiliating wars in her history France saw the vic¬ 
torious German troops march through the streets of 
her capital. On Jan. 18, 1871, Bismarck’s goal was 
won with the proclamation of the new German 
Empire in the French royal palace at Versailles. 

For 20 years Bismarck continued to govern the 
country he had made. He built up its manufactures 
and its trade until Germany was the leading country 
on the continent. But when the young William II 
came to the throne of Germany, he wished actually 
to rule instead of leaving affairs in the hands of 
Bismarck. So the old pilot, who had guided the 
ship of state for so many years, was deposed from 
power, and the remaining eight years of his life were 
spent, like Achilles, in sulking in private and in 
writing the memoirs of his official life. 

Bismarck’s full name was Otto Eduard Leopold von 
Bismarck-Schonhausen. He was made count after the 
Danish War, and a prince after the war with France. The 
third volume of his memoirs, because of its damaging reflec¬ 
tions on Emperor William II, was suppressed until after 
the revolution which made Germany a republic. Bismarck’s 
published volume of letters to his wife, beginning with the 
days of the Frankfort Diet, gives us pictures of that affec¬ 


tionate family life which is one of the best features of the 
German people. 

Bismuth. When the doctor wishes to study the 
workings of your digestion, he gives you a solution of 
certain salts of bismuth to drink, and then takes 
X-ray photographs. Even a small percentage of the 
salts of this metal causes the outlines of the stomach 
and intestines to be clearly discernible, and if the 
photographs are repeated at short intervals a “mov¬ 
ing picture” is obtained of the whole digestive 
process. In this way the doctor learns what is wrong 
and can proceed to cure it. 

Bismuth is sometimes used as an alloy in type 
metal. Like antimony, it has the peculiarity of ex¬ 
panding instead of contracting when it passes from 
the melted to the solid state, and this causes the 
type in casting to press into all the fine lines of the 
mold and so produce a sharp clear face even on very 
small types. With lead, tin, and cadmium it forms 
alloys which melt at very low temperatures. These 
are used for safety plugs in steam boilers and auto¬ 
matic sprinklers. 

Bismuth belongs to the “nitrogen group” of chemi¬ 
cal elements. It has been called the “old man” of 
the family, for it has “outgrown the poisonous quality 
which begins with phosphorus, is at its peak in arsenic, 
and decreases in antimony.” Certain compounds of 
bismuth are often used as a medicine and as an 
antiseptic dusting powder. 

In metallic form bismuth has a bright luster and 
a reddish tinge. It is found both as native metal and 
combined with other metals. Large deposits of 
bismuth are located in Bolivia and Saxony, while 
smaller quantities come from Spain, Norway, Austria, 
England, New South Wales, Utah, Colorado, and 
Connecticut. 

BISON. The American bison, commonly calied 
“buffalo” (Bison americanus ) is the largest and most 
celebrated of all American hoofed animals. Originally 
it was found on two-thirds of the continent of North 
America. Its range extended from Mexico to the 
region of the Great Slave Lake in Canada, and from 
Pennsylvania and the Carolinas to the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. Its food was the herbage of the plain and 
prairie. The number of bison at the time America 
was discovered has been estimated at from 30,000,000 
to 60,000,000. In 1870 the number of survivors was 
estimated at 5,500,000. The vast herds sometimes 
derailed trains in the West and stopped boats on the 
Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. Colonel Dodge 
reports that, while traveling in Arkansas in 1871, 
“for 25 miles he passed through a continuous herd of 
buffalo.” The completion of the transcontinental 
railroads and the introduction of the repeating rifle 
about this period soon almost completed their 
destruction. 

To the Indians of the great plains, the bison was 
the most important game animal. The hides fur¬ 
nished him with the material for tepees and robes. 
He lived a good part of the time on the fresh meat, 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place 

428 


see information 






THE GIANT BISON OF THE OLD STONE AGE 



The Bison or American “Buffalo” disappeared from the prairies a comparatively few years ago, but this huge creature has not 
ranged the plains since the Ice Age. What we know of him has been learned from remains gathered in museums and from pic¬ 
tures drawn or carved by the cavemen artists who hunted him thousands of years ago. All bisons are woolly, but you see this 
ancient species is wooliei- still, as there was need to be in the Ice Age. At that time he roamed both America and Europe. In 
the same period the Woolly Rhinoceros and the Mammoth were making themselves at home in northern France and the Moose, 
Tapir, and Giant Beaver in northern New Jersey. You will notice that this royal gentleman (Bison regius) wears a beard. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 


429 




































BISON 


Migrations of the Bison 



If these were wild Bisons you would have difficulty in getting a look at their babies, 
because both the parents and the little ones are very shy. The calves are born in 
May, or the early part of June, and they get new brothers and sisters only about 
once in three years. 


which is almost as good as beef; and for winter the 
northern tribes made a preparation of the dried meat 
with berries and fats, called “pemmican.” This 
furnished a nutritious and well-balanced ration in 
small space. The buffalo dung, as in India, was 
dried and used for fuel. In 1883 the famous Sioux 
chief, Sitting Bull, buffalo mothers 

and his band of 
warriors are said to 
have slaughtered 
the last thousand 
head in south¬ 
western Dakota, 
leaving less than 
1,000 head then 
alive on the Amer¬ 
ican continent, 
two-thirds of those 
being in Canada. 

The bison's 
massive head is his 
most characteris¬ 
tic feature. His 
bow-shaped back, 
different from that 
of the ox, and the 
unusually long 
vertebral spines 
increase the size 
of his shoulders. 

The convex shape of the frontal bone makes the fore¬ 
head bulge. Over all the bulk of bone and powerful 
muscles of the neck and shoulders is the great shaggy 
coat of curly brown fur. The hair on the head falls 
over the eyes in a thick mane. The forequarters are 
heavier and higher than the haunches, which are 
much more lightly built. 

They Weigh as Much as a Ton 

The adult male stands b l /2 feet high at the shoulders, 
is 9 to 10 feet long, and weighs from 1,600 to 2,000 
pounds. The largest specimen of which we have an 
official record was shot in Montana, in December 
1886, by Dr. Hornaday, and may be seen in the 
mounted group in the National Museum at Washing¬ 
ton. A picture of this specimen adorns the ten-dollar 
bill of our national currency. The female buffalo is 
smaller, for a large cow does not exceed 1,200 pounds 
in weight. The horns are short and black, and in 
the males are thick at the base, tapering abruptly to 
a sharp point as they curve outward and upward. 

In the female they are more slender. The hoofs are 
short, broad, and black. The general color is pale 
brown, darker on the head and shoulders and under¬ 
neath. The hair on the forepart of the body is 10 
to 15 inches long on the head, 6 to 8 inches long on 
the neck, shoulders, and forelegs, and 10 to 12 inches 
under the chin, where it resembles a beard and is so 
called. The hinder and lower portions of the body 
are covered with short, soft, woolly hair. The tail 
ends in a tuft of coarse hair 12 to 18 inches long. 


The long hair on the forepart of the body is per¬ 
manent but that on the hinder portions is shed 
annually, beginning in March. By early summer 

this part of the body is quite naked and very sensitive. 
In order to escape the attacks of flies and of other 
insects, the bison seeks out muddy sloughs and 
and babies shallow ponds, 

where it wallows 

until its body is 

covered with clay 
which bakes in the 
sun and forms a 
protective armor, 
lasting for days. 
The new coat is 
fine by October, 
and at its best in 
November and 
December. The 
hide is then valu- 
able as fur. A 
half-century ago 
“buffalo coats”— 
overcoats made of 
the fur of young 
bison—were in 
common use and 
remarkably cheap. 
Such coats today 
would probably 
sell for $500; formerly they sold at from $12 to $25. 
Many a prime “buffalo robe” was obtained from the 
Indians in exchange for a pound of tobacco or a pint 
of whiskey. 

Under primitive conditions bison herds moved 
from one feeding ground to another, going northward 
in the spring and southward in the fall. The south¬ 
ward migrations occurred in immense herds number¬ 
ing millions of animals. They traveled hundreds of 
miles, swimming mighty rivers and climbing or 
descending steep banks, cliffs, and precipices. They 
followed the same routes year after year usually in 
single file, making paths that became lasting trails 
two or three feet deep. The northward movement 
began in the spring after the calves were strong 
enough to travel. In this movement they separated 
into smaller herds, the bulls occupying the outer 
circle and the cows and calves the inner. When 
danger threatened, the herd closed in, the bulls facing 
outward to protect the weaker members. 

Gray Wolf Their Worst Foe 

The principal enemy of the bison, aside from the 
Indians, was the gray or buffalo-wolf which hung in 
packs about the outer edge of the herds, and often 
succeeded in isolating and capturing a calf in spite 
of all vigilance. The grizzly bear was the only 
animal that could ever vanquish a buffalo bull in 
single fight. 

It required heroic efforts to save the bison from 
complete extinction. It was not until 1902 that 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

430 







Congress took the first steps toward preservation 
when it appropriated $15,000 for the purpose of 
assembling survivors in the Yellowstone National 
Park. As the bison breeds readily in captivity its 
numbers have steadily increased. The Canadian 
herds now contain over 5,000 head, chiefly in a vast 
park in Alberta; and there are an additional 2,000 
or more in the United States, the largest single 
herd being in the reservation on the Yellowstone. 
An interesting hybrid called the “cottalo,” part 
buffalo and part common cattle, has been bred 
in Canada. 

The European bison or auroch was common 
in Europe two or three thousand years ago, 
but is now reduced to a few herds in the 
Caucasus Mountains and in a private preserve 
established before the World War by the Czar 
of Russia. The European bison is somewhat 
smaller than the American, and since it lived 
in forest country it ranged in smaller herds. It 
is stated on good authority that the males out¬ 
live the females about ten years. If this is 
true of the American species, it explains why 
in every herd, as many observers have re¬ 
marked, the bulls always outnumber the cows. 

By an unusual mischance the first skeleton of 
an American bison, 
exhibited in Paris 
in 1819, contained 
15 pairs of ribs. 

As a result of this 
freak, which prob¬ 
ably occurs only 
once in many 
thousands of speci¬ 
mens, the report 
became current 
that the American 
bison has 15 pairs 
of ribs while his 
European cousin 
has but 14 pairs. 

The true buffalo 
belongs to India 
and Africa and 
differs from the 
bison in the ab¬ 
sence of the hump 
on the shoulders 
and the long hair 
on the forepart of 


The watchful expression of its yellow eye 
would be all the sign of life you could detect 
in a Least Bittern “freezing” on its nest. 


the body. (See Buffalo.) 
BITTERN. Hunters have named this marsh-bird the 
‘thunder-pumper” or “stake driver,” for his call sounds 
like the driving of a stake heard from a distance. 
Though his note reaches every part of the swamp, Mr, 
Bittern himself is hard to find, even when he repeats his 
call again and again. His song is the most remarkable 
thing about this “genius of the bog,” as Thoreau has 
called him. As one draws near to his hiding place, the 
one long note seems to divide itself into three syllables, 


plunk-aAunk, and comes with more of a croaking 
sound, though seemingly no louder than when first 
heard. The poet Maurice Thompson well catches the 
spirit of the bird and its haunts in his verses— 

Ho, for the marshes green with Spring, 

Where the bitterns croak and the plovers pipe, 

Where the gaunt old heron spreads his wing 
O’er the haunt of rail and snipe. 

The bittern’s body is about two feet in length and 

he stands from two 
to three feet high 
on his long legs. 
He has a feathered 
crown on his head, 
and the plain 
brownish feathers 
of his back are ex¬ 
actly what he needs 
for concealment 
among the reeds 
and grasses of the 
marsh. His breast 
is yellowish white. 

In the mating 
season, however, 
the male is gay 
with white plumes 
on the neck or 
breast. The nest of 
the bittern is built 
of swamp reeds, 
and there are three 
to five eggs of a 
brownish-gray 
color. The baby 
birds are exposed to all the swamp dangers, and 
minks, muskrats, and water snakes keep the 
watchful mother always on the defensive. 

The bittern is common in both Europe and 
America. The American bittern breeds in British 
Columbia and Newfoundland and even as far 
south as Kansas and North Carolina. It winters 
in the southern states. The “least bittern” is 
a small marsh-bird, very shy and rarely seen 
by man. It nests throughout temperate North 
America and winters from the Gulf States 
southward. 

Scientific name of American bittern, Botaurus lentig- 
inosus; of the least bittern, Botaurus exilis. 

BITTERSWEET. Seen against the dry browns of 
autumn, the bittersweet gives to the woods of most 
parts of the United States, especially in the Middle 
West, dashes of glowing color which rival that of any 
flower. For the bright orange berries, or more 
properly capsules, burst open when touched by the 
frost, and curling back disclose the brilliant scarlet 
fruit within. The bittersweet is a treelike vine which 
does not cling gently like the ivy, but twines its 
woody stem about trees with great strength, some- 


A Bittern, when it isn’t pretending 
to be dead, is a very live-looking 
creature indeed; particularly the 
male, who, as you see, looks as 
“cocky” as the proud ruler of the 
poultry yard. 


BITTERN 


BITTERSWEET 












BLACK BIRD 


BITTERSWEET 


times killing young saplings. Not only does it twine 
about other vegetation, but it “often outdoes the 
kitten that plays with its own tail, twisting its own 
stems together, frequently into a rope of great 
strength.” The small inconspicuous creamy-white 
flowers appear in June. The berries reach their full 
development in September, and if gathered then and 
allowed to dry, will brighten the house all winter. 
Scientific name, Calastrus scandens. 

The European bittersweet (Solarium dulcamara) is a 
totally difierent vine. It is a member of the nightshade 
family and bears drooping clusters of blue or purplish 
flowers, shaped like potato blossoms but much smaller. These 
blossoms give place to tempting-looking but poisonous berries 
about one-half an inch long, which turn from orange to 
red. From the twigs a fluid extract is prepared which is some¬ 
times used in medicine. 

BJORNSON, Bjornstjerne (bySrnst'ySr-na 
byern'son), (1832-1910). “When his name is men¬ 
tioned it is like hoisting the flag of Norway,” so the 
critic Georg Brandes once said of Bjornson, the most 
loved and the most representative of Norwegian 
writers. The author of Norway’s national hymn, her 
greatest novelist, and, next to Ibsen, the greatest 
dramatist of his country, Bjornson embodies the finest 
qualities of the Norwegian people. 

He was born in Kvikne, a little village in central 
Norway, where his father was a Lutheran pastor. 
He was educated at the University of Christiania, 
but left without completing his course in order to 
devote himself to journalism. 

His first novel,‘Synnove Solbak- 
ken’, published when he was 25, 
made a deep and lasting impression. 

It was the first of a series of tales 
of Norwegian peasant life, written 
in the simple and charming style of 
the old sagas. ‘Arne’, published in 
the following year, is perhaps the 
best of all these stories; it contains 
the beautiful song, ‘ Over the Lofty 
Mountains’, which first showed 
Bjornson’s ability as a poet. 

Bjornson was also deeply interested 
in the drama. He was made director 
of the theater at Bergen, and was 
granted a government stipend to 
enable him to travel in Italy, France, 
and Germany. He wrote a number 
of dramas based on the history of 
Norway and then turned, like Ibsen, to the social 
problems of the day. He took a more hopeful opti¬ 
mistic view of these problems, however, than did Ibsen. 
As someone has said, while Ibsen expressed the doubt, 
Bjornson expressed the faith of his people. He was 
less stern and cold, more gentle and sympathetic, 
than Ibsen. 

As a newspaper writer and editor, and as a political 
orator, Bjornson kept in close touch with the life 
about him and played a prominent part in the affairs 
of his day. A strong nationalist, he helped to Bring 


about the separation of Norway from Sweden, which 
took place in 1905. In 1903 he was awarded the 
Nobel prize for the most important literary work of 
that year. Long before his death, in 1910, his books 
had been translated into English and the continental 
languages, so that his literary fame was world wide. 

Among his best stories and novels are: ‘Synnove 
Solbakken’ (1857); ‘Arne’ (1858); ‘A Happy Boy’ (1860); ‘The 
Fisher Maiden’ (1868); ‘The Heritage of the Kurts’ (1884). 
His dramas include: ‘Between the Battles’ (1857); ‘Sigurd 
Slembe’ (1861); ‘Sigurd Jorsalfar’ (1872); ‘The Newly Married 
Couple’ (1865); ‘The Editor’ (1874); ‘A Bankruptcy’ (1874); 
‘The King’ (1877); ‘The New System’ (1879); ‘The Gauntlet’ 
(1883); ‘Beyond Our Power’ (Part I, 1883; Part II, 1895). 

Blackberry. Only in the United States is this 
fruit-bearing shrub cultivated, though it is abundant 
in the British Isles, where it is usually known as the 
“bramble.” It belongs to the same genus as the 
raspberry, from which it is distinguished by its 
plumper and larger berry, and by the fact that the 
conical receptacle comes away with it when the berry 
is picked. More than 25 varieties have been devel¬ 
oped in this country, among them a white thornless 
variety. They are propagated chiefly from suckers 
and root cuttings. Blackberries belong to the genus 
Rubus. The trailing or low blackberry {Rubus 
canadensis) is often called the “dewberry.” 
Blackbird. The “four-and-twenty blackbirds” 
of the Mother Goose pie were singers, but American 
blackbirds do not sing. Indeed, only the “redwing” 
has even a musical call. Of the 12 
species, only the male birds have 
really black plumage. The females 
are rusty gray-brown with light 
markings and the young are like 
their mothers. 

Most blackbirds love swampy 
places, and most of them weave 
their nests fast to reeds close above 
watery ground. Their three to six 
eggs are grayish-green, spotted and 
streaked with brown. They live 
in flocks rather than pairs, and the 
father has little to do with the home- 
building or with the upbringing of 
his children. In autumn they collect 
in great flocks, sometimes tens of 
thousands together, flying from one 
feeding ground to another and finally 
migrating south for the winter. 
Though blackbirds are accused of robbing grain fields, 
they more than make up for that by the vast amount 
of weed seeds and harmful insects they eat. 

Of the American blackbirds the “redwing” is the 
greatest favorite; he is jet black, with gold bordered 
epaulets of red (for illustration in colors see Birds). 
The “yellow-headed” blackbird is the Beau Brummel 
of the family, for he has an orange-colored head and 
breast, with a touch of white on each wing. The 
purple “grackle”—the giant of the family, reaching 
a length of 12 inches—has black plumage with showy 


‘MOTHER’S BACK FROM 
MARKET!” 



A mother Blackbird is here seen re¬ 
turning to her woven nest among the 
reeds with a little luncheon for the 
babies—a nice fat bug. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see 

432 


i n f or motion 








| BLACK DEATH 

metallic lights. He is handsome in appearance, but 
his note is like the creaking of a rusty hinge and he 
has a bad reputation as a robber of nests. Brewer’s 
blackbird, which is found in the western part of the 
United States and Canada, is another handsome 
member of the family. 

In Europe the name “blackbird” is given to a 
totally different bird, belonging to the thrush family, 
which is a beautiful songster and makes a good cage 
bird. 

Another well-known member of the family Icteridae, to 
which the blackbirds belong as well as the orioles and bobo¬ 
links, is the “cowbird” or “cow blackbird.” Like the 
European cuckoo, the cowbird is a parasite, laying its eggs 
in the nests of other birds. It gets its name from its habit 
of following cattle to feed on the insects which flee from the 
browsing herds. Scientific name of redwing, Agelaeus 
phoeniceus; of the yellow-headed, Xanthocephalus xantho- 
cephalus; of the purple grackle, Quiscalus quiscula; of cow¬ 
bird, Molothrus ater. 

BLACK DEATH. “ I leave parchment for continuing 
the work if haply any man survive and if any of the 
race of Adam escape this pestilence.” So wrote a 
despondent English monk in his chronicle, while the 
terrible plague called the Black Death raged in 
England in 1349. And well might he despair, for 
this epidemic swept off at least a third of the population 
of Europe in four years. 

In France the ravages were as great as in England. 
“It is impossible to believe the number who have 
died throughout the whole country,” wrote a French 
monk. “Travelers, merchants, pilgrims, declare that 
they have found cattle wandering without herdsmen 
in fields, towns, and waste lands. They have seen 
barns and wine-cellars standing wide open, houses 
empty, and few people to be found anywhere. In 
many towns where there were before 20,000 people, 
scarcely 2,000 are left. In many places the fields lie 
uncultivated.” 

Not only did the Black Death carry off large num¬ 
bers of people, but it also acted very quickly. A per¬ 
son began to shiver, his temperature rose, swellings 
appeared in the neck, armpits, or groin, and frequently 
death resulted in 12 hours. 

In many ways the Black Death helped to bring to 
a close the Middle Ages. In England before the 
plague there were about four or five million inhabi¬ 
tants; when the pestilence had passed away there 
were only about half this number. Field laborers 
had become scarce, and those who were left demanded 
greatly increased wages. Many peasants left the 
estates of their masters and fled to the towns, or 
found places elsewhere where their lot was easier. 
Parliament passed laws to keep wages and prices at 
their former levels, but these could not be enforced. 
As a result the old manorial system of labor and 
agriculture broke down in England and a new system 
gradually took its place. In the new system the 
land was either rented to tenant farmers, who paid 
money for its use instead of giving their services in 
return, or else the land was retained by the lord 
and put into pasture for sheep. 


BLACK FORESTl 

The Black Death was only one of the many visita¬ 
tions of that disease which today we call the “bubonic 
plague.” During the Peloponnesian War it broke 
out in the city of Athens (430 b.c.). In the reign of 
the Roman Emperor Justinian grain-ships from Egypt 
brought it to Constantinople. Boccaccio places the 
scene of his ‘ Decameron’ on the hills about Florence, 
Italy, during the epidemic of 1347. Defoe describes 
the outbreak of 1665—the “Great Plague”—in 
London. 

The home of the bubonic plague is in Asia and we 
now know that it is carried by a certain kind of fleas 
which live on rats. With the advance of medical 
science and sanitation its ravages have been checked 
in the western world, but constant vigilance is still 
required on the part of health officers at seaports to 
prevent its revival. 

BLACK forest, Germany. Tales of dwarfs and 
elves and fairies haunt every valley and wooded 
height in the famous Black Forest of Germany, for 
scores of the nursery tales grew up in the mysterious 
depths of this wooded mountain region. 

The Black Forest lies in the elbow formed by the 
River Rhine as it flows westward from Lake Con¬ 
stance and turns sharply to the north. Stretching 
away to the north—mile after mile—are the rounded 
mountains, crowned with stately pines and firs. The 
trees support a dome of dark green foliage, giving in 
the half-light an appearance not unlike the interior 
of a great cathedral, although no handiwork of man 
ever fashioned so magnificent a temple. In the nar¬ 
row valleys lie hamlets scattered along the streams, 
while here and there are isolated dwellings, partly 
hidden by fruit trees, looking down from sunny slopes 
or projecting their quaint gables from a forest back¬ 
ground. The length of the chain is about 100 miles 
and its average width is 24 miles. The loftiest ele¬ 
vation is the round-topped Feldberg, 4,898 feet high. 
To one coming from the towering snow-capped peaks 
of the Alps, which lie about 100 miles to the south, 
the Black Forest seems in comparison but a mass of 
gentle wooded hills. 

Unlike the forests of the United States and Canada, 
the woodlands of this region are beautifully kept. 
A tree felled by the wind or blasted by lightning is 
immediately removed, and all broken twigs and 
branches are speedily cleared away to be used for 
fuel. The upkeep of the forest furnishes the inhabi¬ 
tants with their chief means of support. Land which 
in America would be useless waste here supports 
groves worth thousands of dollars an acre. 

Here and there are nurseries in which each spring 
are planted the seeds of a future forest. The pine 
and fir predominate, but in order to provide for every 
locality, other varieties are sown, such as maple, ash, 
birch, walnut, and even fruit trees. The groves 
planted by one generation are cared for by the next, 
and are cut down and sawed into lumber by the third. 

The beautiful Danube and Neckar rivers rise in 
these mountains. Along these and other streams are 



contained in the Easy Reference Fact m Index at the end of this work 

433 






THE BLACK SEA AND ITS CHANGEFUL DISPOSITION 



iteln 


Au/ta> 


Sebastopol 


lonstantza 


farna 


Irianople] 


,orus 




Batui 


iSamsun 


Kutnj 


Draining nearly a fourth of Europe, the Black Sea just had to be big! In summer its disposition is sunny, but in winter it gets as 
cross as a big black bear. Imprisoned within those mountain walls, the winds are set whirling in a vast turmoil which causes trouble 
for vessels. It’s a tempest in a tea-pot, in a way; but what a tea-pot—380 miles wide, 750 miles long, and 7,350 feet deep in some 
places. Probably no body of water of similar size, in spite of ancient belief, is safer for navigators. 


little manufacturing towns, where wooden articles— 
the famous cuckoo-clocks, music boxes, and toys—are 
made. Cattle graze on the grassy slopes, and the 
beauty of the region and the picturesque costumes of 
the inhabitants make the Black Forest a favorite 
summer tourist resort. The greater part of the 
Black Forest is included in the state of Baden {see 
Baden). 

Black SEA. This great sea, five times the size 
of Lake Superior and one-sixth as large as the Mediter¬ 
ranean—with which it is connected by the Bosporus, 
the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles—lies 
between Asia Minor on the south and Russia on the 
north, and between Bulgaria and Rumania on the 
west and the region of the Caucasus Mountains on 
the east, and so plays its part in separating—and in 
uniting—Europe and Asia. For over 2,000 years its 
waters have been traversed by ships of early pirates, 
traders, and settlers, and by vessels of modern com¬ 
merce and war. For Russia the navigation of this 
sea, with its Mediterranean outlets, is a vital neces¬ 
sity, and it has figured since the 18th century in that 
country’s history. The fact that the Turks were able 
to block the entrance at the Dardanelles in the World 
War of 1914-18 tended to prolong that contest and 
contributed to the downfall of Russia. 

Including the Sea of Azof, which is really a gulf 
of the Black Sea, the surface area is about 170,000 
square miles. Its greatest length is 750 miles, its 
greatest width 380 miles, and its greatest depth 7,350 

For any mu bj e c t not found in its 


feet. It has no islands of importance and practically 
no tides. 

The Black Sea drains nearly one-quarter of the 
surface of Europe. This large inflow of fresh water 
makes it much less salt than the ocean or even the 
Mediterranean and sets up a peculiar current. In 
the upper level of the Black Sea the fresh water flows 
outward towards the Bosporus, while in the lower 
levels the current from the Aegean Sea flows in the 
opposite direction. Some of the great rivers which 
find their outlet in the Black Sea are the Danube, 
the Dniester, the Bug, the Dnieper, the Don (through 
the Sea of Azof), and the Kuban. The larger ports 
include Odessa, Kherson, Sebastopol, Trebizond, 
and Sinope. The Black Sea has the reputation of 
being dangerous to navigation, especially during the 
season of winter storms, and the Greeks gave it the 
name Euxine, meaning the “hospitable” or “friendly” 
sea, by way of euphemism. But it is now 
believed that the Black Sea is no worse in this respect 
than other inland seas. It is usually free of ice, even 
in the coldest weather. 

The Black Sea has been navigated from very early 
periods. The Greeks colonized its shores as early as 
the 7th century b.c. After the Turks captured 
Constantinople, in 1453, they closed the sea to all 
but their own ships. Later, however, Russia de¬ 
manded and obtained trade rights for its own vessels, 
but by international agreement the straits were 
closed to war vessels except those of Turkey. 

alphabetical place see information 

















BLAINE 


BLEACHING 


Blaine, James Gillespie (1830-1893). The 
“plumed knight” of the Republican party in the 
zenith of its power, Blaine—like Webster, Clay, and 
Calhoun—was disappointed in what many thought 
to be his reasonable expectation of election to the 
presidency. Born in Washington County, in western’ 
Pennsylvania, a precocious boy with a taste for politi¬ 
cal history and a gift for debate, he was graduated 
at the age of 17 from Washington College. At 26 
he had taught school, studied law, and become the 
editor of the influential Kennebec Journal , of Augusta, 
Maine. He helped to organize the new Republican 
party in that state, and was a delegate to the conven¬ 
tions that nominated Fremont and Lincoln in 1856 
and 1860. 

His rise from membership in the state legislature 
of Maine to Congress, where he was Speaker for three 
terms, and then to the United States Senate, was 
rapid and unbroken. Twice, under Presidents Gar¬ 
field and Harrison, he served as Secretary of State. 
In 1876 and again in 1880 he failed to obtain the 
Republican nomination for President; and when he 
obtained it, in 1884, he lost the election to Cleveland. 

During intervals of retirement from public life he 
wrote his ‘Twenty Years of Congress’ (1861-1881), 
a work of considerable historical value. As a states¬ 
man he favored a reciprocity tariff policy, and gave 
increased attention to South American affairs, calling 
the first Pan-American conference in 1889-1890. He 
was a great political leader, beloved by hundreds of 
thousands for his magnetic qualities; but he was 
equally distrusted by other thousands, even of his 
own party (called “Mugwumps” in the election of 
1884), who regarded him as unscrupulous or corrupt. 
BLAKE, Admiral Robert (1599-1657). The mem¬ 
ory of Blake, the greatest English admiral next 
to Nelson, is dear to the English people not only for 
his naval glory and success but even more for the 
tradition of his chivalrous character and his unselfish 
patriotism. 

Like Sir Francis Drake, Blake grew up in a seaport 
town in the south of England, but spent nearly ten 
years studying at the University of Oxford. It is 
said the examiner refused him further scholarly 
advancement on account of his short squat ungainly 
figure. Blake gained wealth, office, and good repute 
in his native town and was chosen by his Puritan 
fellow-townsmen as their representative in the Short 
Parliament. 

Blake’s great qualities of leadership first shone 
with brilliancy when the Civil War broke out in 1642. 
He at once joined the Parliamentary forces and drew 
favorable attention to himself, chiefly through the 
seizure and year-long defense of Taunton, which 
enabled the Parliamentary party to maintain itself 
in the west of England. 

Blake was now asked to assume a high command 
in the navy and pursue the royalists who had taken 
to the sea. He at once built up the fleet and pro¬ 
ceeded to hunt the royalists from the high seas. At 



Cartagena he caught and destroyed the greater 
portion of their vessels and captured their last strong¬ 
hold, the Scilly Islands. Blake was now called on to 
lead the English fleets in their mighty struggle for 
the mastery of the seas against the Dutch under the 
doughty De Ruyter and the famous Van Tromp, who 
was cruising with a broom at his mast-head to indicate 
that he had swept the seas clear of Englishmen. In 
battle Blake showed the same daring and heroic 
enduran'ce that had already marked him out. He 
was repeatedly in the most extreme danger, was once 
severely wounded, and much of the time he suffered 
painfully from disease. In spite of all, however, 
Blake and the other English leaders triumphed and 
Van Tromp was defeated. The English, for the time 
being, had established their naval supremacy. 

The last exploit of the great admiral was his 
greatest and most daring—the crushing defeat in 1657 
of a Spanish fleet in the Canary Islands, under the guns 
of a castle and six or seven forts. This exploit excited 
great enthusiasm in England and admiration through¬ 
out Europe. After this his health failed rapidly and 
he died on his way home as he was sailing into the 
harbor of Plymouth. Blake received a magnificent 
public funeral and was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
the first British seaman to be so honored. 
BLEACHING. When cotton, linen, wool, and other 
fabrics are manufactured they contain a certain 
amount of coloring matter. To give them the snow- 
white appearance they usually have, they must be 
bleached—that is, whitened. Many other substances, 
such as paper, oil, and wax, also require bleaching. 

Formerly cotton and linen fabrics were bleached 
by repeatedly boiling them in caustics and lyes and 
exposing them to the sun after each boiling. The 
finely woven white goods which we still call “lawn” 
got its name from the fact that it was spread on lawns 
or grass to bleach. This process was very tedious and 
took nearly half a year. The people of Holland used 
to excel in this craft, and down to the middle of the 
18th century English manufacturers used to send all 
their linen to Holland to be bleached. The process 
was shortened from several months to a few days by 
the discovery, in 1790, of the bleaching powers of 
chlorine gas, in contact with water. 

The most important bleaching agent is the chlorine 
compound known as chloride of lime or “bleaching 
powder.” When dissolved in water it releases oxygen. 
This unites with the coloring matter and forms a 
white compound, which either dissolves in water and 
is washed out, or remains in the fabric. Paper, linen, 
cotton, hemp, and other fabrics of vegetable origin 
are usually bleached with chlorine. Other chemicals 
that act in a similar way are peroxide of hydrogen 
(which is used for feathers, hair, leather, and ivory), 
peroxide of sodium, and potash permanganate, used 
for straw and jute. 

Wool and silk are usually bleached by chemicals 
which release hydrogen instead of oxygen, forming 
compounds which may be washed out of the fabric. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

435 







BLIGHT 


BLIND 



BLIGHT. When plants dry up and shrivel, or turn 
yellowish or brown, or when the fruit decays early, 
the plant doctor says that it is probably an attack of 
“blight.” Very often this is caused by a mildew 
attacking the leaves, but it may be due to a poor 
supply of food and air at the roots. 

Blights of grains are called “rusts” or “smuts,” 
because they make the grain look 
reddish or black. Some other 
common blights are “scab” and 
“rot” of potatoes, “beet-root rot,” 

“peach leaf curl,” and “apple 
scab.” (See Mildews and Molds; 

Rusts and Smuts.) 

Blind, Education of. Blind, 
deaf, and dumb! Can you im¬ 
agine a more pitiable plight for a 
two-year-old child? This was the 
situation of little Laura Bridgman, 
about a hundred years ago; but, 
nevertheless, she became a cheerful, happy citizen, 
and did a great deal for the happiness of others. An 
attack of scarlet fever in 1831 left her completely 
shut out from the world, save for her sense of touch, 
and her life seemed completely blighted. 

When she was eight years old, however, Dr. 
Samuel G. Howe, superintendent of the Perkins 
Institute for the Blind in Boston, undertook the 
untried task of developing a mind thus doubly barred. 
First the child was given a spoon and a fork on which 
were labels with the raised letters F-O-R-K and 
S-P-O-O-N. Gradually the connection dawned upon 
her, and when the labels were removed she could 
replace them on the proper articles. Then the let¬ 
ters were separated, and patiently she was taught to 
assemble them again so they would spell the words. 
This process was repeated with other articles, until 
finally she was familiar with the whole alphabet, and 
knew how to spell many names of simple objects. 

Now she was ready to learn finger spelling. A 
raised letter would be given her, and, with Laura’s 
delicate fingers “watching” closely, the deaf-and- 
dumb sign of that letter would be formed by the 
teacher. Soon she was “writing her thoughts on the 
air” with astonishing rapidity, and by feeling with 
her hands the signs made by the person conversing 
with her, she was soon “talking” with them. This 
education continued until she was 20 years old, and 
she developed into an unusually skilful teacher of 
blind children and was happily employed earning 
her own living until her death in 1889. 

The Beginning of a New Era 

Laura Bridgman did not have the brilliant mind of 
that other famous blind deaf-mute, Helen Keller, and 
did not achieve such spectacular results (see Keller, 
Helen). But her education was the greatest accom¬ 
plishment of the comparatively new art of teaching 
those similarly afflicted. Up to the beginning of the 
19th century, scarcely any attempt had been made 
to ease the lot of the blind and to teach them to 


support themselves. Today by far the greater num¬ 
ber of blind persons in progressive countries are edu¬ 
cated, independent, self-supporting citizens. For this 
change much of the credit is due to the blind them¬ 
selves—to their eagerness to learn and their untiring 
devotion to their tasks. 

Books for the blind now for the most part are not 
printed in raised letters, but in an 
alphabet of raised “points” so 
arranged as to represent the dif¬ 
ferent letters. This method was 
invented in 1829 by Louis Braille, 
who became one of the best organ¬ 
ists in Paris and a noted educator 
of the blind. As a child he de¬ 
lighted to play in his father’s 
saddlery shop, punching holes in 
the scraps of leather with an awl. 
One day the sharp tool slipped, 
injuring his eye so severely that 
he became totally blind. He thought a great deal 
about the little marks the awl left in the leather, 
and the idea came that if the awl were punched 
only half way through, a dot would be raised on 
the other side. With this as a basis he worked 
out a system whereby different variations of groups 
of little raised dots represented letters of the alphabet, 
special word and syllable signs, and punctuation 
marks. Educators seized upon this system, and 
with modifications it is taught in every country 
where there are schools for the blind. To persons 
whose fingers are not sensitive, it seems as it did to 
the newly blinded soldier, who, running his finger 
over the page, exclaimed disgustedly, “Aw, it feels 
just like a sheet of sandpaper.” But to thousands 
who have mastered its characters it has opened a 
new world of happiness. 

Two modifications of “braille” are in general use 
in the United States—“American braille” and “New 
York point.” 

Typewriters have been invented for writing both 
these systems, and machines for embossing the char¬ 
acters on brass plates, so that any number of im pressions 
may be printed. 

Books for the Blind are Costly 

A large number of books and several magazines are 
printed in braille as well as in raised letters. Both 
kinds of books for the blind are much more expensive 
than printed books. Dickens’ ‘Old Curiosity Shop’, 
for example, which can be obtained at the bookstores 
in prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50, costs $17.50 
in braille, and is bound in six fat volumes. So most 
blind people have to depend on their school libraries, 
on public libraries in the larger cities which have col¬ 
lections of such books, and on state libraries which 
make the circulation of books for the blind a part of 
their work. The United States government aids the 
work by permitting such books to be sent through 
the mails under a “frank,” that is, without postage. 

The alphabet of raised Roman letters in combina- 


abcdefghi j k 1m 
nopqrstuvwxyz 

1234567890 


You see how simple the Braille alphabet is— 
just a few little dots in various positions 
that to the sensitive fingers of the blind soon 
come to convey the precious message of 
books. 


For any subject 


not found in its alp habetical place see information 

436 








tion with certain other characters is still valuable for 
those who are too old to learn the new method or 
whose fingers are not sensitive enough to learn the 
point system. But to be legible the letters must be 
large, and this makes the books too bulky for 
ordinary use. 

For writing braille by hand, a grooved board is 
used with a perforated metal rule to serve as a guide, 
and the points are impressed on soft paper with a 
metal pencil. This is read on the reverse side. Writ¬ 
ing braille is a tedious process, so in most institutions 
for the blind the use of the Braille typewriter is also 
taught. For writing to the seeing, advanced pupils 
are taught to use also an ordinary typewriter. The 
“touch” system now universally used by stenog¬ 
raphers was originally devised for the blind. Special 
touch devices are employed to teach geography, arith¬ 
metic, and natural history to the blind. 

One of the most wonderful recent inventions, the 
phonopticon, may soon enable the blind to hear the 
books they cannot see (see Light). 

The United States government, through the Vocational 
Education Board, accomplished wonderful results in retrain¬ 
ing the soldiers blinded in the World War of 1914-18. Here 
the work was different from the teaching given in the schools 
for the children who have always been blind; for blind 
soldiers, like other adults blinded by accident, are forced 
into a new sort of life that is overwhelmingly different. 
They are normal men, forced to live in darkness, and they 
must “learn to be blind.” The vocational schools retrained 
the majority of blinded soldiers to take a fairly independent 
place in normal life. The Braille system of reading was 
taught, and instruction was given in anything the soldiers 
desired to adopt as a business or a “paying hobby.” 

Most of the European institutions for the blind depend 
on charity, but in the United States it is believed that all 
children, whether normal or handicapped, should receive 
education as a matter of public policy; so schools for the 
blind constitute a part of the educational system of the 
states. Blind children are given much the same sort of 
instruction as those who can see, and are also trained in 
some profession or handicraft by which they will be able to 
earn a living. 

Many blind persons are engaged in farming. Many of 
them excel as musicians, and a considerable proportion of 
the graduates of schools for the blind become piano-tuners. 
Basketry and broom-making are other occupations especially 
suited to the blind. 

BLOCKADE. During the Civil War in America, the 
most daring sea captains of the Confederacy were 
employed in the effort to break through the lines of 
Union warships which blockaded the Southern sea¬ 
ports. In the dead of night, their low black-painted 
ships, usually loaded with cotton for the British mar¬ 
ket, would steal out of the harbors and make a dash 
for the open sea. But often the creaking of the rig¬ 
ging or the swish of water under the bow would 
bring a hail out of the darkness; “Ship, ahoy! Haul 
to, or I fire!” Then the effort to escape would be 
broken by the thunder of a flaming broadside from 
a Northern man-o’-war, and it was “sink or swim” 
for the crew of the blockade runner , as these vessels 
were called. The war measure which closed the 
Southern ports and ultimately starved out the Con¬ 
federacy is an historic example of the naval operation 


known as “blockade.” It extended even to neutral 
ships, which were liable to seizure if they tried to 
break through into a blockaded port. 

In the Declaration of Paris, agreed to by the great 
powers in 1856, the principle was laid down that 
fighting nations could not declare an enemy port 
blockaded unless they actually carried out the block¬ 
ade with warships patrolling the approaches to the 
harbor. “A blockade, in order to be binding, must 
be effective,” was the way the agreement read. 

During the World War of 1914^18, sea-mines, sub¬ 
marines, and the development of long-range guns for 
coast defense made it impossible for the Allies to 
carry out an actual blockade of the ports of the 
Central Powers. So the principle of 1856 was modi¬ 
fied, and an “embargo” or “long-range blockade” of 
the enemy countries was declared. Before its entrance 
into the war the government of the United States 
refused to recognize the legality of these measures, 
and engaged in long discussions with England and 
France on this point. But the far more serious 
menace to American shipping and lives created by 
the German “blockade” of indiscriminate submarine 
sinkings ended the discussions by forcing the United 
States into war on the side of the Allies. As President 
Wilson said, “Property can be paid for; the lives of 
peaceful and innocent people cannot be.” (See 
World War of 1914-18.) 

Blood. If you were to put a drop of your blood 
under a microscope and examine it, you would find 
that it was made up of a liquid, called the “plasma,” 
in which floated millions of tiny round bodies. These 
are living cells and are of two kinds. One kind is red 
and is called the “red corpuscle.” A single drop of 
blood contains about 170,000,000 of these minute 
bodies. They are manufactured in the marrow of 
the bones and are the oxygen carriers. The other 
kind of cell is known as the “white corpuscle,” be¬ 
cause of its lack of color. The white corpuscles are 
much fewer in number than the reds. They are 
somewhat larger in size and possess the power of 
changing form and of creeping. They gather par¬ 
ticles of foreign substance, and creep with them out 
of the blood-vessels, and even to the surface of 
the body. They feed upon bacteria, and help to rid 
the body of disease germs. They are therefore the 
scavengers of the blood. They are renewed from the 
spleen and lymphatic glands. A microscopic exam¬ 
ination of the blood and counting the number of 
white or red corpuscles is often necessary as an indi¬ 
cation of disease or health in the body as a whole, as, 
for instance, in appendicitis. 

The plasma is a very complex liquid. It contains 
food products on their way to be used in various 
organs, and also waste materials on their way to 
organs of elimination. In general the purpose of the 
blood is to supply every part of the body with what 
it needs and remove what it does not need. 

The plasma has a peculiar characteristic which is 
extremely useful. If a blood-vessel is cut or broken 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hit work 

437 







BLOOD 


BLOODROOT 


so that the blood is escaping, there is a substance in 
the plasma which becomes fibrous. This entangles 
the corpuscles in its meshes and forms a clot; other¬ 
wise we might bleed to death. This process is called 
coagulation. 

The weight of the blood is approximately one- 
twentieth that of the body. 

We may compare the circulation of the blood in 
the human body to the water supply of a large city, 
with this difference: The city does not gather the 
water up, after it has once been distributed, and 
bring it back to the city pumping plant. The body, 
on the other hand, pumps the blood round and round. 

The body station (the heart) is a double one (see 
Heart). The left side pumps oxygenated or “arterial” 
blood all over the body. This blood loses much of its 
oxygen in passing through the living organs, and at 
the same time collects a waste product called carbon 
dioxide. Therefore, the blood comes back to the 
right side of the heart as “venous” blood. The right 
side pumps this venous blood through the lungs. 
There it takes up oxygen again, and loses carbon 
dioxide and then passes back to the left side of the 
heart as arterial blood. Thus the blood constantly 
goes out but always comes back to the same place, 
moving—as Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation, 
said—“in a circle, as it were.” 

The passage from the left side of the heart through¬ 
out the body and back to the right side is called the 
“systemic” circulation; while the passage through 
the lungs is known as the “pulmonary” circulation. 
All this necessitates three sets of pipes or blood¬ 
vessels. Those which carry blood from the heart are 
called “arteries,” and those which carry blood to the 
heart are called “veins.” The extremely small— 
indeed, microscopic—tubes connecting the arteries 
and veins are called “ capillaries.” There are millions 
of capillaries, and in one sense they are the most 
important vessels, because in them the exchanges of 
food and waste take place. 

Pure and Impure Blood 

We have spoken of oxygen and carbon dioxide as 
examples of usable and waste materials. It is on 
the basis of the relative proportions of these two gases 
that arterial blood is often called “pure” and venous 
blood “impure.” But it should be borne in mind 
that many other kinds of usable material, mostly 
so-called foods, and many kinds of waste are collected 
and distributed. Thus it happens that venous blood 
from the intestinal wall during digestion may contain 
more food than the arterial blood supplied to the 
same organs. The venous blood from the kidney is 
purer as regards certain waste substances than the 
arterial blood. So it goes. The blood in every part 
differs slightly from every other part. The circula¬ 
tion leads to a constant renewal, purification, and 
mixing of the blood, so that every part gets what it 
needs and gets rid of what it does not need. The 
whole body works as a unit, each organ doing its 
own particular work, and the blood is the go-between. 


The blood is at once food agent and garbage man. 
You may thus get some idea of how important the 
circulation is. 

Regulating the Circulation 

Ordinarily the flow of blood to the different organs 
is very nicely regulated without any conscious work 
on our part. That is^ the organ which is working 
hardest will receive a greater proportion of blood at 
the time than the one that is at rest. But we may 
consciously increase or change the rate of flow from 
one organ to another by increasing the activity of 
that organ. This is true chiefly in regard to the 
voluntary muscles. And we may seriously interfere 
with the circulation by taking anything into the 
system which will interfere with the heart action or 
with blood-vessels, such as drugs of various kinds. 

The force of gravity is always acting on the blood, 
as upon any liquid, tending to pull it into the lowest 
parts of the circulatory system. Under usual circum¬ 
stances this is compensated for, and head and feet 
respectively get their proper amounts of blood. 
Sometimes the nervous regulation is defective, the 
blood is drawn away from the brain and the person 
faints. This type of unconsciousness is at once 
recovered from when the person is placed flat on the 
ground, so that gravity cannot pull blood away from 
the brain. 

Through the circulation, also, the temperature of 
the body is adjusted. If we are warm, more blood 
goes to the skin. If we are cold, the blood is kept 
inside and heat loss is diminished. ( See also Heart; 
Physiology; Respiration.) 

The ancients believed that the arteries contained air, 
and only the veins blood. The Greek physician Galen, in 
the second century a.d., demonstrated that both arteries 
and veins contain blood; but he thought the blood went out 
and back in the arteries—a kind of ebb and flow—and simi¬ 
larly for the veins, with a different kind of blood. A direct 
connection between arteries and veins was not thought of. 
In 1628 Dr. William Harvey, of London, published a book 
in which he proved that the quantity of blood leaving the 
heart and the rate at which it leaves made a return to the 
heart necessary. He did not, however, actually see the 
minute capillaries which connect arteries and veins. It 
remained for the Italian Malpighi, in 1661, and the Hol¬ 
lander Leeuwenhoek, in 1669, to demonstrate with the 
microscope the existence of these minute tubes connecting 
arteries and veins. If the foot of a live frog is placed under 
a microscope, the blood may actually be seen flowing through 
the capillaries which lie in the webbing between the toes. 

BLOODROOT. In the warm Sunlight of early 
spring the bloodroot bursts into wondrous loveliness, 
only to vanish in a day or two when the fragile white 
petals are swept by the spring rain or winds. While 
the days are still sharp and chill, it pushes its blos¬ 
som above ground, wrapped in the protecting cloak 
of its silver-green leaves, ready to unfold with the 
first warm sunshine. The plant owes its name to 
the blood-red juice which oozes from its broken stems 
and roots. Perhaps grandmother may tell you that she 
once cured a cold or cough by eating drops of this 
orange-red liquid on a lump of sugar. The roots of 
the plant are still used at times in medicine. Long 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

438 







ago the Indians stained 
their bodies with the 
bright dye before a war 
or peace dance, or used 
it to color the grasses 
and quills for their fancy 
baskets. We find these 
dainty blossoms cover¬ 
ing rocky slopes and 
gracing the open wood¬ 
lands during April and 
May, from Canada to 
the warm southern 
climes of Florida. 

Scientific name of blood- 
root, Sanguinaria cana¬ 
densis; it belongs to the 
poppy family. Flowers, 
white with golden center, 
at the end of smooth stem 
6 to 14 inches tall; the calyx 
has 2 sepals and the corolla 8 to 14 oblong petals; there 
is one short pistil, and numerous stamens. The leaves are 
rounded, deeply and palmately lobed. The plant grows from 
a thick fibrous root. 

BLUEBELL. Countless allusions in literature to the 
“ bluebells of Scotland” have accustomed us to t hink 
of this delicately colored flower 
as peculiar to that country, but 
it is no less common in North 
America and other parts of the 
Northern Hemisphere. The bell¬ 
shaped blossoms droop on their 
slender stems, so that the petals 
form a roof to protect the pollen 
from the rains. The bluebell is a 
hardy plant and is often found 
peeping through snow and ice, 
which are supposed to be melted 
by its heat. 

The bluebell belongs to the genus 
Campanula, which includes about 300 
species, among them the familiar “Can¬ 
terbury bells,” all of them popular on 
account of their bell-shaped blue, violet, 
or white flowers and the ease with 
which they are cultivated. It gets its 
scientific name, Campanula rotundi- 
folia, from the roundish shape of its 
root-leaves. 

Blueberry. Like the cran¬ 
berry, the blueberry is nature’s 
free gift. Our entire market supply of this delicious 
fruit comes from the extensive patches of wild bushes 
found here and there in the United States, Canada, 
and northern Europe. Attempts to cultivate the 
blueberry all failed until scientists recently discovered 
that in its wild home it is always associated with a 
nitrogen-gathering fungus which grows on its roots. 
Now that the secret has been discovered, growers 
may perhaps begin to cultivate the blueberry on a 
large scale to supplement the wild crop, especially as 
it grows only on poor sandy acid soils unfit for other 
more valuable cultivated crops. 


bluebird[ 

Gathering blueberries is an important industry in 
many parts of the country, especially in Michigan, 
Minnesota, and Maine, which contain huge tracts 
covered with the bushes. The “blueberry barrens” 
of Maine cover an area of about 150,000 acres. 
Picking this fruit is easy, for the berries grow in large 
clusters. Often a patch is burned over to produce a 
new and more vigorous growth the next year. 

Blueberries vary in color from a shiny bluish-black 
to dark blue with a bluish-gray bloom. In the 
markets the blackberries are usually called “huckle¬ 
berries,” though the names huckleberry and blue¬ 
berry are often used indiscriminately. In some 
localities the “highbush” berry, which grows on a 
shrub sometimes ten feet high, is called the huckle¬ 
berry, and the term blueberry is reserved for 
the choicer fruit of the “lowbush” variety. In 
England the terms “whortleberry” and “bilberry” 
are used. 

Botanists distinguish two genera of blueberries, Vaccinium 
and Gaylussacia, both of the family Vaccinaceae, which also 
includes the cranberry. Some restrict the term "huckle¬ 
berry” to the genus Gaylussacia. 

Bluebird. Have you found the “happiness 
bird”? With his sky-blue coat and his delicate 
spring song you may see him any early spring day 
along the roadside, for like his 
namesake in Maeterlinck’s story 
he is to be found in common places. 

The bluebird is only seven 
inches long, but he is every inch 
a gentleman. His dull-red vest 
and white underfeathers contrast 
well with his showy coat. His 
gentle manners are in keeping 
with his sweet voice,, for he is 
devoted to his mate in her quiet 
gray-blue dress and he takes his 
turn with her at keeping the 
bluish-white eggs warm. When 
the babies hatch, both parents are 
tireless in supplying the five or six 
hungry mouths, and in keeping 
tidy the hollow post or bird-box 
home. Unlike many other birds, 
they carry all refuse to some dis¬ 
tance from the nest. 

Bluebirds often nest twice each 
season. Their food is largely in¬ 
sects, though they eat some berries and small fruit. 
During the summer they are found throughout North 
America east of the Rocky Mountains as far north as 
southern New Brunswick. Late in the fall they 
migrate to the southern states. Among the first 
birds to come in the spring, the bluebirds are 
among the last to leave, remaining until the frosts 
of November. 

Bluebirds belong to the family of thrushes. Besides the 
true bluebird of the east, Sialia sialis, there is a western 
bluebird, Sialia mexicana occidentals, found on the Pacific 
coast, and a mountain bluebird, Sialia currucoides, found in 
the Rocky Mountain regions. 


I BLUEBELL 



"In the warm sunlight of early 
spring the Bloodroot bursts into 
bloom, only to vanish when the 
fragile petals are swept by rain 
or wind.” 


A BLUEBIRD FAMILY 



Did you ever see a prettier family group? 
On the highest twig sits Papa Bluebird, just 
below him is Mother Bluebird, and at her 
side a dear little baby bluebird with its 
speckled breast. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

439 







) BLUE-FISH 


BOARDS OF TRADE 



BLUE-FISH. A salt-water fish of blue color, two 
or three feet in length, highly prized as food and also 
as a game fish. (See Fish.) 

BLUEJAY. * “Thief! thief!” the bluejay shrieks, 
as he flies through the orchard. Uncle Remus says, 
“Jay-bird don’t rob his own nes’,” so his warning 
must be to the small birds he is about to molest. 
He is a bold and cheerful rascal, so handsome that 
he makes us forget his appetite for eggs and young 
birds. His admirers have tried to clear him of the 
charge of nest-robbing, but the outcry of his little 
neighbors when they see him near their homes is 
evidence against him. 

Jays, a group of the crow family, are found through¬ 
out a large part of the world. They are smaller than 
crows and more active. Most species are brightly 
colored and nearly all show some shade of blue. The 
common jays of Europe have a body color of reddish- 
gray with blue and black on tail and wings. 

The most showy of the family are our own blue- 
jays. They are about 11% inches long. Male, 
female, and young are alike feathered in violet-blue 
above, white and gray below. A showy crest of blue 
is outlined by a black band which extends around the 
neck like a collar. The wings and tail are bright azure- 
blue, broadly tipped with white and barred with 
black. Of their manner James Whitcomb Riley says— 
Mr. Bluejay, full o’ sass 

In them baseball clothes o’ his, 

Sportin’ ’round the orchard jis’ 

Like he owned the premises! 

Besides his robber-cry, the bluejay has a clear 
musical whistle-call unlike the notes of any other 
bird. His nest of sticks, bark-strips, rags, paper, 
or any material that is handy, is built in the low 
branches of a bushy tree, oftenest an evergreen. 
There are four to six greenish-buff brown-spotted 
eggs. The birds feed on insects and large seeds, 
nuts, and some fruit. 

Although in autumn there is a general migration 
toward the south, the bluejay is frequently found in 
Canada the year around, and in the United States 
he'is a regular winter resident. 

Jays belong to the family Corvidae, of the order Passeres. 
Scientific name of the bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata; European 
jay, Garrulus glandarius. 

Boa CONSTRICTOR. Often the name “boa con¬ 
strictor” is loosely applied to any large serpent 
that crushes its prey in its powerful coils. But the 
name properly belongs to two snakes which are 
natives of tropical South America, the true boa con¬ 
strictor and the anaconda. The former lives in dry 
bushy regions, and the latter in swampy places. The 
boa constrictor sometimes attains a length of 12 feet 
and the anaconda of 30 feet. Both are to be dis¬ 
tinguished from the pythons, which are residents of 
the tropical regions of the Old World. The boas 
have no poison fangs, but their powers of crushing 
are great. They are able to swallow whole animals 
the size of a small dog. After feeding they remain 
torpid for several weeks to complete the process of 


digestion and during this period they may be easily 
killed. (See Snakes.) 

Boar. Hunting this ferocious species of wild swine 
was once one of the favorite sports of kings and nobles, 
and a special breed of dogs (boar-hounds) was devel¬ 
oped for it. The wild boar is larger than most breeds 
of the domestic hog, and its formidable tusks and 
savage spirit make it a dangerous foe when brought 
to bay. It is still preserved for hunting on some 
great estates in Europe. “Pig sticking,” as it is 
called in India, is one of the most popular sports 
among British residents there. 

This powerful beast is about four feet long and cov¬ 
ered with bristles and grayish-black hair. The great 
tusks of the lower jaw in the adult curve so far over the 
snout as to become useless, and their place as weapons 
is taken by the protruding teeth of the upper jaw. 
The boar lives in the forest and comes forth at night to 
feed on roots, herbs, grains, and small animals. 

Scientific name of European wild boar, Sus scrofa. It is 
found in Europe, northern Africa, and central and northern 
Asia, is fairly plentiful in Spain, Russia, and Germany, but 
is extinct in England. The Indian wild boar, Sus cristatus, 
is slightly taller than the European. The “peccary” of 
Texas and Mexico, a much smaller animal, was the only 
wild hog found in North America. 

BOARDS OF trade. A large floor crowded with 
frantic men, most of them in shirt sleeves, all shout¬ 
ing at the top of their lungs, waving their arms, 
dashing here and there, stumbling over each other in 
their eagerness, making strange signs in the air with 
their fingers, while messenger boys dodge in and out, 
running at full speed with papers in their hands— 
this is the scene in the grain exchanges of the large 
cities in the United States on busy days. They look 
like madhouses, but it is in the midst of such pande¬ 
monium that the grain crops of the country are bought 
and sold from year to year. 

Grain exchanges—called in Chicago the “Board of 
Trade,” in Minneapolis the “Chamber of Commerce,” 
and by various names in other cities—are simply 
market places. Anyone in any part of the world who 
wishes to sell or buy grain may do it in these open 
markets by instructing his broker by mail or by wire 
how much grain he wishes bought or sold and what 
price he is willing to pay or take. The exchange 
organization provides a place where the brokers may 
meet, and lays down certain “rules of the game” to 
govern the transactions and take care of whatever 
controversies arise; but even when the “pit” is 
crowded with some hundreds of struggling shouting 
men endeavoring to execute their orders, there is no 
bickering over details, and there is implicit confidence 
that the contract will be faithfully carried out. Sales 
involving thousands of dollars are made by a single 
word, a nod of the head, or a slight gesture, and each 
party merely jots down on a little card a memorandum 
of the transaction. 

The price quotations in the leading exchanges are 
immediately telegraphed to all parts of the world. 
If differences arise between two markets greater than 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

440 






Dealing in Futures 


1 \ BOATS AND BOATING! 


the cost of transportation between them, a person 
may buy in the low market and immediately sell in 
the high one by telegraphing to a broker in that city, 
and thus the price of wheat tends to equalize itself. 
By this process, called “arbitraging,” grain prices are 
kept even all over the world. 

Besides grain growers who sell their produce on the 
exchange, and others who buy it because they really 
wish to acquire it for exporting, milling, or other 
purposes, there is a large class of “speculators” who 
buy or sell according to whether they think the price 
is to be high or low. By means of the information 
which the exchange is constantly receiving from all 
over the world about the condition of the crops, and 
weather conditions, wars, or rumors of war which 
would affect supply and demand, these speculators 
become very expert in judging whether the price of 
grain is likely to rise or fall. If the price is lower than 
they believe is warranted they are quick to purchase 
grain, which tends to raise the price. If the price 
seems too high they instantly sell, and this tends to 
lower it. The price of grain is consequently a very 
close balancing of supply and demand all over the 
world, and, in spite of many doubtful practices, the 
speculators’ quick response to market conditions aids 
in keeping the price near the proper figure. 


Perhaps the most important feature of the grain 
exchange is “dealing in futures.” Suppose A, a 
farmer, makes a contract in July with B, a merchant, 
to sell him all his wheat which will be harvested in 
September. B is then the legal owner of this “Septem¬ 
ber wheat,” and if he sees an opportunity to sell it 
to C at a higher price, he will do so. This process 
may continue until the “future crop” has passed 
through hundreds of hands, and when September 
arrives the wheat that A sold B is shipped to the last 
buyer in the series. If the grain is sold for immediate 
delivery, it is called “spot” wheat. 

“Bulls” and “Bears” of Trade 
Those speculators who buy in the hope of selling 
later at a higher price are called “bulls.” Those who 
sell what they do not possess—“sell short”—in the 
belief that before the time for delivery arrives they 
can buy at a lower price, are called “bears.” Very 
often speculators do not buy the grain outright, but 
pay only a small part of the value of each bushel, 
called a “margin.” This enables the buyer to con¬ 
trol more grain than he would be able to buy out¬ 
right, and thereby gives him a chance for greater 
profits. If, however, the price of the grain goes 
below what his “margin” will cover, he must make 
good the deficit or lose all he has already paid down. 


The LURE of BOATS and BOATING 



TJ/'HEN man first conquered the waters he took a step 
'' comparable to that taken thousands of years later 
when he mastered the air. And something of the thrill 
of that far-off conquest lingers with us still, whenever we 
silently paddle a light canoe through the winding course 
of a forest-hung stream, or dash across a lily-padded lake 
to the resounding put-put-put of a speedy motor boat, or 
swing dreamily along an ocean coast beneath the bellying 
sail and singing rigging of a sailing yacht or catboat. 
Boating remains one of the most popular of summer 
pastimes, and no section of a great museum is more 
fascinating to old and young than that which shows the 
quaint models of boats of other times and lands. 


seacoast. Each age has contributed something to 
the development of boating until in these days of 
science there are all manner of craft that plow through 
the water or glide over the surface, half flying, half 
swimming. But the pleasure of boating has not 
greatly changed—it is essentially the 
same now that it was thousands of 
years ago, when man first discovered 
that he could contrive a craft that would 
support his weight upon the water. 


B OATS and Boating. It is a long step from 
the crude raft of logs tied with vines or rawhide 
thongs, on which our ancient ancestors paddled their 
way across the forest streams, to the finely built 
sailboats and motor-boats that today pass swiftly 
up and down our lakes and rivers and along the 


The “Birch-bark” of the Red Man 

From the raft to the “dugout” canoe was a big 
step, from the dugout to the skin or bark-covered 
craft a smaller one, and no one knows when or how 
these steps were first taken. The earliest white man 
who came to the shores of America found the Indians 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

441 












r- 

BOATS AND BOATING 



The Delights of Canoeing 


paddling their graceful birch-bark canoes up and down 
the streams and even venturing out upon the ocean. 
A great deal of the exploring which was done by the 
pioneers was accomplished by the aid of such canoes. 

STRIPPING BARK FOR A BIRCH CANOE 



Not only the building of the birch-bark canoe, but the stripping 
of the bark from the tree requires a good deal of skill. Hun¬ 
dreds of years before the white man came the Indians had 
learned to cut the bark with their stone hatchets and remove it, 
as you see them doing here. 

They were so light in weight that the travelers could 
carry them long distances over rough trails of the 
wilderness, and at the same time could transport in 
them considerable loads of provisions 
and equipments. 

The canvas-covered canoes of cedar 
which we use for pleasure today are 
modeled upon the type that the red 
man devised when he fashioned his 
craft of birch and cedar and filled its 
seams with the pitch of the spruce, 
and 1 ke their prototype they are keel¬ 
less. A canoe suitable for the use of two 
persons is 17 or 18 feet long and weighs 
from 60 to 100 pounds. It will float in 
even a few inches of water and for that 
reason is ideally adapted for trips up 
shallow or swift-running streams. For 
unpracticed users “sponson” canoes are 
built with air-chambers along the gun¬ 
wales from stem to stern. These add 
about 25 pounds to the weight, but the result is a craft 
which practically cannot be capsized or sunk, thus 
removing about the only objection to the ordinary 


canoe. The canoe is ordinarily propelled by light 
paddles 4^ to 5^ feet long; but it can also be 
equipped with a detachable motor. Paddling is quite 
an art, especially to handle the stern paddle and guide 
the vessel by a turn of the blade without shifting 
the paddle from one side of the craft to the other. 

There are few pastimes that offer more enjoyment 
than canoeing. The spring, summer, and fall months 
find numerous camping, fishing, and hunting parties 
setting out to the four points of the compass on the 
northern rivers and lakes, with their “duffle” loaded 
snugly amidships and ready to spend days or weeks 
or even months on the forest waterways. And every¬ 
where on the lakes and rivers near the cities and 
summer resorts thousands of young people find 
recreation and exercise in these smoothly gliding 
craft which give the perfection of motion on the water. 

On some of the larger lakes and rivers and along 
the coast where there are protected harbors, canoes 
are often used for sailing. Equipped with a small 
lateen sail a canoe will make excellent speed in a stiff 
breeze, especially if provided with “leeboards” to 
serve the purpose of a keel. Each year the American 
Canoe Association holds a regatta in which there are 
many entries for the sailing races, and in these 
contests extraordinary gymnastic feats of balancing 
may be witnessed on the sliding outboard seats which 
are often used. 

Why Every Canoeist Should Learn to Swim 

The light construction of the ordinary canoe makes 
it extremely sensitive to movement on the part of the 
paddler. For that reason every canoeist should be 
a good swimmer, though it is true that a capable 
paddler is not likely to capsize, for he has learned 
to adjust his body to the craft. One needs only to 
watch a tilting contestant to see how trustworthy a 
canoe even of the non-sponson type is, and how 
difficult it is to capsize one when handled by an 
expert. In these contests, which somewhat resemble 
BOY SCOUTS AND THEIR “WAR CANOES” 


the jousting bouts of mounted knights, each canoe is 
manned by a paddler in the stern and by a tilter who 
stands in the bow armed with a long pole, the end 



If you are a Boy Scout, you needn’t be told what a lot of thrill is to be had in 
helping to drive a “war canoe” through the water in a race against another. In 
this picture are shown two of these “war canoes” and other craft near a Boy 

Scout summer camp. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

442 








One of the most extraordinary craft ever built is the canoe (4) used in the Santa Cruz Islands, a group near the Solomon Islands. 
It has a long platform erected at right angles to the dugout with a living-house at the end supported by the outrigger. Other strange 
craft shown above are (1) an Eskimo kayak; (2) a goofah, used on the Tigris; (3) a coracle such as the early Britons used; (5) a 
catamaran with an outrigger; (6) an inflated bull’s hide used by the natives of India for crossing rivers; (7) a balsa, or large raft, 

used by natives on the coasts and rivers of South America. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

443 











































The Great College Races 


)boats AND BOATING 



of which is heavily padded. The object of the contest 
is for one crew to capsize the other. It often happens 
that a vigorous thrusting and parrying with the 
tilting poles continues for many minutes before one 
of the canoes is put out of the combat. 

The Indians sometimes built large canoes in which 
many warriors paddled. So today, imitating the 
red man, there are “war canoes,” built for boys’ 
camps, to be manned by a dozen or more paddlers, 
who develop a high degree of team work in prepara¬ 
tion for races with other canoes. 

Boats differ from canoes chiefly in being propelled 
by oars instead of by paddles. Greater force of 
course can be exerted with oars than with a paddle, 
but the rower is at the disadvantage of having to face 
backward instead of forward. The types of boats 
for pleasure and use are legion, ranging from the long 
narrow racing sculls through the light Adirondack 
guide boat and ordinary skiff, to the heavy “dories” 
of the North Atlantic fishermen and the life-boats of 
ocean liners and the life-saving service. 

The one-man sculls are extremely light boats of a 
long narrow build, with sliding seats and out-rigger 
oars. In the four-oared and eight-oared shells such 
as are used by school and college crews in boat races, 
each man pulls a single oar. Almost all of the 
colleges and universities which are established near 
water have their four- and eight-oared crews, and 
there are many private boat clubs which are repre¬ 
sented by similar crews. 

Training for the Races 

The racing season is in the spring of the year. A 
great deal of time is spent by the candidates in 
training for the races, for there is probably no sport 
in which form and condition count more largely than 
they do in rowing. The person who combines 
strength with such a mastery of the stroke that he 
gets the full power of his body into each sweep of 
the oar is the one who usually “makes the crew.” 
Weight is an advantage, of course, but it sometimes 
happens that candidates who are light win positions 
from rivals of much greater weight but less skill. 

The races between eight-oared crews are the most 
important events of the intercollegiate regattas. Each 
crew consists of eight oarsmen and a coxswain who 
handles the tiller. The standard of skill is high, and 
in such races as the annual events between Harvard 
and Yale on the river Thames, in Connecticut, the 
two crews will often row side by side nearly the whole 
length of the four-mile course. The time for the 
four-mile race is usually between 20 and 22 minutes. 
The record for the course—20 minutes and 2 seconds 
—was made by the Harvard crew in 1916. Cornell 
holds the record for the four-mile eight-oar inter¬ 
collegiate race, held on the Hudson River course at 
Poughkeepsie, covering the distance in 1901 in 18 
minutes and 531-5 seconds. Occasionally inter¬ 
national races are arranged between club or univer¬ 
sity crews in the United States and crews in England, 
where also boating is a highly developed sport. 


Some of the girls’ colleges, too, make rowing a 
regular part of their athletic program. Eight-oared 
crews are selected in competitions that are similar to 
the competitions for the varsity crews in the men’s 
colleges, but the races are not such severe tests of 
strength and endurance. The races, moreover, 
usually take place between crews representing various 
classes within the college, rather than between crews 
representing different colleges. 

In the ordinary rowboat, of course, the rower uses 
two oars. Along the seacoast and on the inland 
waters a small skiff will furnish an immense amount 
of enjoyment and provide boys and girls with excel¬ 
lent exercise as well as a safe pastime—if ordinary 
precautions are taken. Rowing develops the back, 
leg, and arm muscles, and it is rare to find a good 
oarsman who does not possess an excellent chest 
development. 

Pleasure Boats with Sails 

Sailing does not offer, perhaps, quite so much 
opportunity for exercise and physical development as 
rowing, but there is no question about the fascination 
of the sport and its health-giving qualities. Between 
the “dory” sailboat 12 or 15 feet long, the broad flat 
“cat-boats” with a single mainsail, and the great 
sloop-rigged racing yachts, there are many gradations 
in size, speed, and amount of sail carried. The smaller 
boats usually depend upon a “center board” or “drop 
keel” to enable them to sail “in the wind,” while the 
larger ones are keel vessels. 

A high degree of skill is demanded of one who 
handles a sailboat cleverly. He must know what 
sails to use and how to use them under a great variety 
of conditions, and must develop not only a keen sense 
in steering the boat but also must have the ability— 
especially in light winds—to find streaks of wind 
which will send his boat ahead of competitors. Along 
the seacoasts, on the Great Lakes, and on some of 
the smaller inland waters yachting is a favorite sum¬ 
mer pastime of many young people. Races are held 
for boats of various classes and suitable rewards are 
given to the winners. 

The Races for the America’s Gup 

The acme of all sailboat racing comes with the arrival 
in American waters of a challenger for the America’s 
Cup, which the United States has successfully 
defended since 1851. The scene of these international 
races is the gathering place for yachting devotees 
and people from all parts of the country to see the 
slim 90-foot vessels with their towering masts and 
billowing sails contend for the famous cup. Crews 
trained in all the finesse of sail handling, helmsmen 
who know how to steer their boats with extraordinary 
skill, and skippers who have an uncanny way of find¬ 
ing wind streaks and of maneuvering their boats into 
favorable positions handle the challenger and the 
defender. It speaks well for American yachtsmen 
and American designers of boats that the cup has not 
left our shores in so many years. Only less notable is 
the fine spirit of sportsmanship displayed by Sir 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

444 






[Motor-Boats and “Freak” Boats ^ 


BOATS AND BOATING 


Thomas J. Lipton, the great British tea merchant, 
who again and again, in spite of defeat, has devoted 
his fortune to renewing the challenge which may 
return the cup to Great Britain. One of the reasons 
for America’s success in these com¬ 
petitions is that so many young people 
take an interest in yachting that there 
is a constant supply of “talent” to 
take the place of the yachtsmen who 
retire. There are many yacht clubs 
in American waters, and the number 
of persons who take part in this 
healthful and interesting pastime is 
constantly increasing. 

In recent years gasoline motor-boats 
have been increasingly used both for 
business and pleasure. The simplest 
form of motor-boat is the small craft 
equipped with a detachable one- 
cylinder engine, which sends it along at the rate of 
a few miles an hour. Sometimes, as has been stated, 
these light motors are even put in canoes. Between 
a comparatively small but serviceable little craft and 
the motor-boat equipped with a powerful engine which 
drives it through the water at 30 or 40 miles an hour, 
or perhaps even faster, 
there are even more 
gradations in size and 
speed than there are be¬ 
tween the small sailboats 
and the cup defenders 
mentioned above. Most 
of these motor-boats are 
driven by gasoline engines 
especially designed for 
service in boats; some, 
however, are equipped 
with automobile engines. 

There are also many 
freak boats such as the 
“sea sleds” which glide 
along the top of the water 
at a terrific speed. Motor- 
boat races form one of the 
most exciting contests of 
the regattas which take 
place at many points 
along the shore and inland 
waters. 

Whether it is canoeing, 
rowing, sailing, or motor¬ 
boating, sport that takes 
one out upon the water in 
the summer brings many 
joys and provides zest and stimulation that increase 
one’s health and physical development. There is 
an instinctive desire in almost all of us to play 
upon the water; we manifest it as soon as we are 
able to toddle down to the shore, and it remains 
with us all of our days, giving us pleasure and 


healthful recreation whenever we are able to indulge it. 

One of the most curious of primitive boats was 
the round “coracle,” which Caesar found in use when 
the Romans invaded Britain, and which is still used 
in certain lakes of Ireland and by 
Welsh fishermen. It is an open saucer¬ 
shaped vessel, usually large enough 
for one man only. A skin or other 
waterproof covering is stretched and 
fastened over a frame made of thin 
strips of wood laid across one another, 
tied together, and bent upward. 

A boat similar to the coracle is the 
“goofah,” a queer circular basket-like 
craft of the East, in which, some say, 
Moses was set adrift. It is still in 
use in the region of Bagdad on the 
Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is 
about six feet in diameter, woven 
from willow twigs, and smeared on the outside with 
bitumen to make it water-tight. 

Boats of a very different type, resembling in shape 
the Indian canoe, are made by the Eskimos. Those 
used by a single man for sealing or fishing, called 
“kayaks,” are made by covering a strong light frame¬ 
work of bone or wood with 
skins. The boat is decked 
over except at the center 
where a hole is left for the 
occupant, who laces him¬ 
self tightly in with a skin 
apron, when seated, to 
prevent the water from 
entering. Though frail, 
these boats are very 
buoyant, and a skilful 
boatman can capsize his 
kayak with a twist of the 
paddle and turn com¬ 
pletely over under water. 
A large undecked boat 
constructed of skins, 
called the“oomiak” or 
“woman’s boat,” is also 
made. While clumsier, it 
has the advantage of 
carrying a large number 
of persons and consider¬ 
able loads of goods. 

In the Pacific islands 
and elsewhere a sort of 
raft called the “catama¬ 
ran” is much used, made 
by lashing together three 
or more logs. Though crude, it is able to travel 
through rough seas where modern craft would be 
unsafe. The name “catamaran” is also applied to 
boats with “outriggers” of varying forms, which 
serve to stabilize them; and to double boats, which 
have often been built in the United States. It is 


A CANOE, TENT, AND COT 



An ingenious combination of tent, 
canoe, and cot. The tent and the 
cot tuck away in the canoe when 
you are on the water. 


A CAMBRIDGE “EIGHT” IN ACTION 



The annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge is the 
big event in unir ersity athletics in England. Here a Cambridge 
“eight” is in the lead, keeping stroke to the call of the coxswain, 
who sits in the stern and steers the light “shell.” 


the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

445 


contained in 









BOER WAR 


[boats and boating 



practically impossible to capsize such craft, and 
long sea voyages were made in them. 

In 1865 John MacGregor, a Scotchman, invented 
a wooden canoe known as the “Rob Roy,” built 
somewhat like the Eskimo kayak, being entirely 
decked over with the exception of a cockpit in which 
the canoeist sat. It was strong and light enough to 
be carried over land, so it could be used for long 
journeys. It was propelled by a 
paddle grasped in the middle and 
with a blade at either end. 

The making of a “dugout” 
canoe by savages without ade¬ 
quate tools required much skill. 

Usually a suitable log was shaped 
roughly on the outside with axes, 
and the interior was then burned 
out. A week or more was 
required for this operation, as 
the coals had frequently to be 
renewed or shifted from place to 
place, while the wood was dam¬ 
pened here and there to guide 
the course of the fire. The final 
shaping was then done by axes 
and other tools. 

The birch-bark canoe of the 
North "American Indians reached 
the greatest perfection in canoe 
building. Although light 
enough to be carried by 
one man, it is so buoyant that it 
will bear a considerable load. 11 is 
made by covering a light but 
tough framework of wood with 
sheets of birch bark, which are 
sewed together and made water¬ 
proof in the seams with resinous 
gums. The work was done largely 
by the women, and great skill was 
required to separate the bark 
from the trees in large sheets— 
usually in the spring—and in 
shaping and sewing it with fibers. 

Bobolink. Like the little girl in the nursery 
rhyme, when bobolink is good “he is very, very good, 
and when he is bad he is horrid.” In northern 
states where he goes and wins his mate, he is known 
as “the gladdest bird that sings,” and his habits of 
life are above reproach. His tinkling song, “bob-o- 
link, bob-o-link, spink, spank, spink,” is heard over 
every meadow as he flutters excitedly above the grass 
where the tiny nest is hidden. 

Half of his seven inches is tail. The small graceful 
body has jet black under-feathers that cover the face 
like a mask. Buff upper feathers and markings of 
light on wings and tail give him a showy suit (for 
illustration in colors see Birds). 

The bobolink family of four to seven children 
are fed almost entirely on insect-pests and weed seeds, 


and are considered desirable and valuable citizens. 

But when the nesting season is over a transforma¬ 
tion takes place. Bobolink exchanges his handsome 
black and buff for a streaked sparrow-like suit such 
as his mate wears. He exchanges his northern 
meadow for a southern plantation, and his insect 
diet for one of ripening rice. He even changes his 
name, for in the South, where these birds in flocks of 
thousands stop on their way to 
South America, they are known 
as rice-birds. 

Here the bobolink is at his 
worst. Not content with all that 
he can eat, he wastefully breaks 
the stalks and scatters the grain. 
He is such a menace to the 
farmer that men and boys are 
hired to drive him from the fields. 
The slaughtered birds are consid¬ 
ered a great table delicacy when 
dressed and broiled. 

The long migration of three 
months ends in southern Brazil, 
where for five months these birds 
do nothing but eat and 
be merry. Late in March 
the males put on their mat¬ 
ing feathers and the flocks 
start northw'ard. When 
they reach the southern planta¬ 
tions they again yield to their 
appetite for rice, and swooping 
down on the newly sprouting 
fields, uproot the tender green 
plants and eat the root grain. 
Then, like outlaws fleeing from 
justice, they fly to the North 
where on their good behavior 
they are always sure of welcome 
and protection. 

Bobolinks, with orioles and black¬ 
birds, belong to the family Icteridae, 
of the order Passeres. Scientific name 
of bobolink, Dolichonyx orygivorus. 

Bobwhite. The common name for the most fam¬ 
iliar American species of quail. (See Quail.) 

Boer WAR. On Oct. 11, 1899, war broke out in 
South Africa between the independent Boer republics 
of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State on the 
one side, and the British Empire on the other. Only 
after three years of the hardest fighting were the 
British able to conquer their sturdy backwoods 
opponents. 

The Boers were descendants of Dutch colonists 
in Cape Colony who had “trekked” northward in 
1836 and afterwards, to escape British rule following 
the passing of Cape Colony into British hands. A 
conflict with the Transvaal Boers had occurred in 
1881, in which the British suffered a defeat at Majuba 
Hill; this was followed by treaties (1881 and 1884) 


For any .abject not found in its alphabetical place see informati , 

446 


THE MERRY SINGERS OF THE FIELDS 



Meet Mr. and Mrs. Bobolink. They are 
newly married, and as you see, Mr. B. is 
wearing his wedding dress of black and buff, 
while Mrs. B. has on her streaked sparrow¬ 
like gown. 







in which it was agreed that the Transvaal should 
have complete self-government in internal affairs., 
though in external affairs it should be under the 
suzerainty of Great Britain. 

Then in 1885 came the discovery of rich gold mines 
in the Transvaal, and a flood of foreign and British 
adventurers poured in. The Boers remained chiefly 
rude farmers and stock-raisers, and friction with the 
uitlanders (“outlanders”) followed. An ill-advised 
raid by Dr. Leander S. Jameson (in December 1895), 
to aid the uitlanders against the oppressive measures 
of President Paul Kruger only made matters worse. 
A birthday cablegram from the German kaiser to 
President Kruger led the Boers to believe that they 
might count on German assistance, and in 1899 war 
ended the long-drawn-out negotiations. The Orange 
Free State joined the Transvaal in arms, and many 
liberals throughout the world sympathized with the 
Boers’ fight for independence. 

The vigor of the Boers and the distance of the 
conflict from Europe taxed the resources of Great 
Britain as they had never been taxed since the days 
of Napoleon. Her foes were trained to the use of 
weapons since boyhood, and fought in a country 
where they knew every pass and “kopje” (hill). 
There were no great battles, and the war was mainly 
a series of ambuscades, traps, and sieges—of Lady¬ 
smith, Mafeking, and Kimberley especially. For the 
British, Lords Roberts and Kitchener were eventually 
put in chief command, while the Boers fought under 
generals Christian de Wet, Louis Botha, Joubert, and 
Delarey. 

Excellent marksmen and horsemen though they 
were, the Boers were unable to resist the stream of 
men that Great Britain poured into the war. On 
Feb. 27, 1900, General Cronje, one of the Boer lead¬ 
ers, surrendered with 4,000 men. On March 13 
Lord Roberts entered Bloemfontein. On May 1 the 
advance began on Pretoria, the Boer capital. At 
Spitzkop, on September 8, General Botha fought the 
last set battle of the war. 

From that time until the war’s actual end, the 
Boers led by De Wet, Smuts, and others harassed the 
British with guerilla tactics. Because of the obsta¬ 
cles placed in the British path by the non-combatant 
population, concentration camps were established 
where the high rate of mortality among women and 
children prisoners aroused world-wide criticism. 

By the treaty of Pretoria (May 30, 1902), which 
ended the struggle, the Transvaal and Orange Free 
State became British colonies. But self-government 
was soon restored, and in 1909 these former enemy 
countries became equal members with Cape Colony 
and Natal in the South African Union, and Gen. 
Louis Botha—the former Boer leader—became the first 
prime minister (see Botha). The British had employed 
450,000 men in the war, losing 1,100 officers and 
22,800 men killed, wounded, or missing, and 43,616 
sent home as invalids. The total Boer force was about 
95,000. (See Rhodes, Cecil; South Africa.) 


BOHEMIA. Persons of unconventional habits and 
more or less artistic or literary tastes are sometimes 
called “Bohemians.” But the real inhabitants of 
this ancient kingdom—now the chief part of the 
Czecho-Slovak republic—are a busy hardworking 
people, as far removed as possible from their flighty 
namesakes. 

Bohemia lies very nearly at the center of the 
European continent, and is roughly rectangular in 
shape. It is bounded on three sides by mountain 
chains (the Bohemian Forest, Ore Mountains, and 
Sudetic chain), and on the fourth side by the Mo¬ 
ravian hills. Since early in the Middle Ages its 
inhabitants have been chiefly Slavs (called Czechs), 
but there is a numerous German minority along the 
northern borders. 

The king of Bohemia early became one of the 
seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 
14th century, Bohemian kings of the Luxemburg line 
were also emperors, and Bohemia was one of the 
most flourishing countries of Europe. The Univer¬ 
sity of Prague (the capital), which dates from this 
period (1348), is one of the oldest in Europe. The 
Hussite wars of the 15th century, which grew out of 
the religious teachings of John Huss, left the power of 
the kingdom greatly impaired. After 1526 Bohemia 
was a possession of the Hapsburg house. The Thirty 
Years’ War, which started in 1618 with a Protestant 
revolt in Prague, left the land terribly wasted and 
Protestantism crushed. 

In the 19th century there was a revival of the 
Czech literature and Bohemian nationalism, which 
manifested itself in unsuccessful revolt against Aus¬ 
trian rule in 1648, and successfully in 1918, in the 
course of the World War. (See Czecho-Slovak 
Republic.) 

gOLEYN ( bul'in ), Anne (1507-1536). The second 
queen of Henry VIII of England, Anne Boleyn, was 
made a romantic figure in history by her tragic fate. 
She was the daughter of a noble of Henry’s court, but 
was educated in France. She became maid of honor 
to Queen Catherine soon after her return from 
France, and was so unfortunate as to attract King 
Henry by her gaiety and beauty. Divorcing the 
Spanish princess who had been his queen for 20 
years, Henry married Anne. But soon his fickle 
fancy turned to Jane Seymour, and he was ready to 
believe scandalous tales which were whispered of his 
young wife. Condemned on the charge of unfaith¬ 
fulness to her royal husband, Anne protested her 
innocence to the last. She went to her death on the 
scaffold, while still a beautiful young woman of 28, 
with pathetic courage. “My neck is small enough,” 
said she, spanning it with her fingers, when assured 
that the headsman would do his work skilfully and 
with little pain. As a lasting claim to fame, she left 
to the world her two-year-old daughter, who became 
the great Queen Elizabeth. 

Bolivar, Simon (1783-1830). “The Washington 
of South America” or “the Liberator” are the 


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447 






TbOLI VAR 

titles given this great South American statesman and 
general, because it was he who organized and led 
the revolutions which, after 300 years of misrule, 
freed Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia from 
the power of Spain. Born in Caracas (now the capital 
of Venezuela) of a noble and wealthy Spanish colonial 
family, he was studying law in Madrid when Napo¬ 
leon overran Spain and temporarily broke her power. 
All Spanish America realized the opportunity to 
emulate the United States of the North and struck 
for freedom. 

Hastening home, Bolivar put himself at the head 
of the patriots of Venezuela. The successful insur¬ 
rection in Caracas, in April 1810, was followed within 


b"o L I V I 

spirit Bolivar resigned his offices in 1829 and retired 
to Cartagena (Colombia). He died the next year, 
at the early age of 47 years. Not until long 
after his death were his character and services truly 
estimated. 

Obliged for a time to assume dictatorial powers, 
Bolivar was a sincere patriot, devoted to the cause of 
liberty and equality. His private fortune and the 
large sums voted to him were spent for military 
supplies and in the liberation of slaves. President 
Monroe trusted him and gave him timely aid by 
recognizing the new republic, and announcing the 
“Monroe Doctrine,” which notified European govern¬ 
ments to keep hands off. Bolivar was buried in 



THE LARGEST LAKE IN SOUTH AMERICA 



If w e were really on the water we are looking at, we should be more than 12,000 feet above sea level- for this is Tiffed, 
lake of its size in the world As there is no wood hereabouts, the natives weave thoseboa” of reeds! They are very sub stant.aU 
made and are used to carry merchandise and fish to various parts of the lake. 


a month by rebellion in Argentina and Chile. Soon 
the continent boiled into revolution. For the next 
20 years Bolivar led a life of romantic adventure. 
Between victories and disastrous campaigns, he was 
alternately the conquering hero with an army and 
autocratic power, and a deserted fugitive pursued 
to the West Indies by hired assassins. He reached 
the pinnacle of his glory in 1828, when he was presi¬ 
dent of three countries which he had liberated: the 
republics of Colombia (then comprising Venezuela, 
Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador), of Peru, and of 
Bolivia—the latter formed from southeastern Peru 
and named in Bolivar’s honor. 

The spirit of disunion and opposition, however, 
was strong, and in broken health and bitterness of 


Caracas, where the centennial of his birth saw a 
triumphal arch erected to his memory. 

BolivTa. A disastrous war with Chile which 
ended in 1883 stripped this mountain republic of 
South America of its rich nitrate-bearing province 
on the Pacific seaboard, together with the port of 
Antofagasta, and since then Bolivia has had no 
coast line. Although the fourth political division of 
South America in size, its population is reckoned to 
be less than 3,000,000. Boundary disputes with its 
neighbor Paraguay make its area uncertain; official 
estimates vary from 514,000 to 562,000 square miles— 
about as large as all the states of the American Union 
bordering on the Pacific, with the addition of Nevada 
and Arizona. 


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not found in its alphabetical place 

448 


see information 











BOLIVIA 


| Fertile Slopes of the Andes 



LA PAZ, THE CAPITAL ON THE ROOF OF BOLIVIA 



Twelve thousand feet above sea level—a height so great that the visitor finds even walking hard work—stands La Paz, the world’s 
highest capital. Frowning mountain walls a thousand feet high encircle it, and lar above it tower the white slopes of Illimani, 
one of the giants of the Andes. Although it is in the tropics. La Paz lies at such a height that the cold at night is often intense. 
The barren grandeur of the surrounding mountains, the dazzling sunshine, and the brilliant colors of the houses make a sight such 

as can be seen nowhere else in the world. 


The population is less than four to the square mile, 
and is distributed principally through the lofty 
plateaus of the Andes Mountains, which here reach 
their greatest width and tower to enormous heights. 
Although Bolivia lies in the torrid zone, these high 
table-lands, most of them more than 12,000 feet above 
sea-level, have a climate almost arctic in its severity. 
{See map under Brazil.) 

Potosf, where Bolivia’s greatest silver and tin 
mines are located, is the highest town in the world 
(14,350 feet above sea-level), and frosts occur there 
every night. Sucre is supposed to be the capital, but 
La Paz is the actual seat of the government. It is 
the loftiest of the world’s capitals, its elevation of 
over 12,000 feet giving it an annual average temper¬ 
ature of 50 degrees. There is no coal or timber at 
these heights, and fires are rarely used, except for 
cooking. The only fuel is a large woody-rooted plant 
called yareta. The great central table-land is 
extremely arid and the few hardy crops fail unless 
the rains are abundant. 

Lake Titicaca, a great inland sea about the size 
of Lake Erie, lies partly within Peru and partly 
within Bolivia. It is the largest lake of South 


America, and one of the loftiest in the world, having 
an elevation of 12,644 feet. Its intensely cold waters 
are frequently swept by furious gales. Regular 
steamer service connects the two extremities. Not 
far from the Bolivian end lie the vast ruins of Tia- 
huanaco ( te-a-wa-nd'ko ), the work of a mysterious 
Indian race of unknown antiquity, antedating by 
centuries the Inca semi-civilization (see Incas). 

On the eastern slope of the Andes the river valleys 
fall away in beautiful fertile slopes. Between 9,000 
and 5,500 feet the temperature is delightfully mild 
and the vegetation is varied and abundant. Below 
5,500 feet great undulating plains stretch east and 
northeast to the borders of Brazil, and southeast to 
Argentina and Paraguay. Here lie trackless swamps, 
vast grassy pasture-lands, and dense virgin forests. 
In the valleys, known as yungas, and in the lowlands 
the climate is sub-tropical and tropical. The soil is 
amazingly fertile, and with the development of trans¬ 
portation and increase in population, these regions, 
which comprise about three-fifths of the country, can 
be made one of the garden spots of the world. Here 
are grown Bolivia’s principal crops—sugar cane, 
coffee, cacao, corn, wheat, beans, rice, and fruits. 


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BOLIVIA 


BOLSHEVISTS 


The rubber forests of the lowlands are enormously 
productive, and Bolivia ranks next to Brazil as a 
rubber country. The forests contain many beautiful 
cabinet woods, which will gain commercial importance 
when these districts are opened up. 

Of the Bolivian animals the most interesting are 
the guanaco, the llama, the alpaca, and the vicuna, 
all of the camel family, but smaller than their relatives 
of Africa and Asia. The llama and the alpaca have 
been domesticated, the former as a beast of burden 
and the latter for its fine wool, which is a staple export 
(see Alpaca; Llama). All the characteristic animals 
of the Amazonian tropics occur in the river basins. 

Mineral wealth of incalculable extent lies buried 
in the Bolivian Andes. Much of the gold and silver 
of the ancient empire of the Incas came from the 
Bolivian mines, and the yield since the days of the 
Spanish conquerors exceeds in value 15,000,000,000, 
it is said. Bolivia also produces one-quarter of the 
world’s tin, and there are valuable deposits of copper, 
wolfram, tungsten, lead, antimony, bismuth, and 
many other metals, besides precious stones. Indica¬ 
tions of petroleum have been found in many places. 
Until the railway facilities are extended, however, 
this wealth must remain comparatively untouched. 
Many mines still have to send their ores to distant 
railways in 100-pound loads carried by llamas. 

To serve her vast area Bolivia has less than 1,500 
miles of railway. Construction is exceedingly costly, 
because of the difficulties of the Andean routes. Most 
of the projected lines are to connect the uplands with 
the eastern lowlands, so that the crops raised on the 
fertile valleys and plains adjoining Brazil and Argen¬ 
tina may be transported to the bleak barren moun¬ 
tains to support a larger mining population. Seven 
thousand miles of navigable rivers provide the chief 
transport in the eastern regions. 

Fifty per cent of the population of Bolivia is of 
pure Indian blood, about 12 per cent is white, and 
the cholos or half-breeds compose the remainder. 
Eighty-five per cent of this population is distributed 
over the great central plateau, where the enormous 
distances prevent the development of a unified 
national spirit. Probably fewer than 10 per cent can 
read and write. But of recent years a determined 
effort has been made to grapple with this difficult 
problem, and many a boy is today bending over an 
American desk that had to be carried hundreds of 
miles to the remote interior on mule-baclc. 

The government of Bolivia is a highly centralized repub¬ 
lic. The electorate is small because it is restricted to those 
who can read and write, and own real estate, or have a 
fixed income. There is a congress with two houses, but the 
chief power is the president, who appoints his ministers and 
the prefects (governors) of the ten departments. 

Under Spanish rule Bolivia formed part of Peru. After 
about 15 years of insurrection, the Bolivians gained their 
freedom in 1825, and took their name in honor of General 
Simon Bolivar, the greatest liberator of South America, 
who drafted their new constitution. Factional disputes and 
civil wars were many during the 19th century, and since 
1827 Bolivia has had 70 presidents or dictators. Bolivia 
was the first South American nation to follow the lead of 


the United States in protesting against Germany’s submarine 
warfare during the World War of 1914-18. It severed 
diplomatic relations with Germany on April 13, 1917, after 
the torpedoing of the Tvhantia, which had the Bolivian 
minister to Berlin on board. 

BOLOGNA ( bo-lo'nya ), Italy. Few European cities 
present as vividly as Bologna the contrast between 
picturesque medieval days and the busy commercial 
life of modern times. Lying in a fertile plain at the 
base of the Apennines, it is the center of a network 
of railway lines which follow roughly the course of 
the ancient roads from Florence, Milan, Genoa, and 
Venice. 

Along the arcaded streets laid out by the Romans 
in the 2d century b.c., busy shopkeepers ply a pros¬ 
perous trade. Automobiles hurry up and down 
before the doors of the oldest university in Europe, 
the alma mater of Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso. In 
the shadow of the 130 churches, many of which date 
back to the 11th and 12th centuries, thriving fac¬ 
tories turn out silk and linen, glass, leather, and 
machinery. The well-known Bologna sausages are 
sold in the markets where the Guelphs and Ghibellines 
fought for supremacy in the 13th century. 

One of the most noted churches in the city is that 
of San Domenico, where lies the body of the founder 
of the Dominican order of monks. The excellent 
art collection of Bologna includes as its most 
highly prized work Raphael’s famous painting of 
St. Cecilia. 

The University of Bologna was founded in 1088 
and its fame drew students from all parts of Europe. 
It began as a law school, but soon expanded to include 
faculties of arts and sciences, and in 1262 is said to 
have had 10,000 pupils on its rolls. It was here that 
Luigi Galvani discovered galvanic electricity in 1789. 

Bologna was incorporated in the Papal States in 
1506 by Pope Julius II. By a popular vote in 1860, 
it became part of the kingdom of Italy. Population, 
about 175,000. 

BOL'SHEVISTS. The name Bolshevists or “ Bolshe- 
viki” ( bol-she-m-ke '), which gained such wide currency 
in the years following the World War, comes from the 
Russian word bolshinstvo, which means “majority.” 

It first arose in 1903, when the radical wing of the 
Russian Social Democratic party, led by Nikolai 
Lenin, gained a majority in a meeting to shape the 
policies of that organization, their opponents being 
called “Mensehviki” (party of the minority). 

The Bolshevists were extreme Socialists, who took 
literally the doctrine of a “class war” and sought to 
put the government exclusively in the hands of the 
“proletariat” (hired laborers). They gained control 
of the government in Russia in November 1917, in 
part through financial and other aid furnished by 
Germany, Russia’s enemy. Gradually the Bolshevists 
won over a considerable portion of the Menshevists, 
and also of the Social Revolutionary party, to which 
most of the peasants belonged; for they encouraged 
the peasants to seize as their own the lands of the 
richer landholders. 


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450 






Although the Bolsheviki made a shameful peace 
with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, it 
was only with a view to substituting a people’s war 
of revolution in all countries in place of what they 
styled an “imperialist” war of capitalist governments. 
After the close of the World War, they carried on 
active propaganda in many lands to bring on the 
“world revolution” which they sought, but outside 
of Russia their success was small. In Russia, how¬ 
ever, by the use of methods as relentless as those 
which marked the former government of the Czars, 
they long succeeded in maintaining themselves in 
power against all attempts at counter-revolution. 
(See Lenin, Nikolai; Russia; Trotzky, Leon.) 
Bombay ( bdm-ba '), India. The city of Bombay is 
“the gateway to India.” Its harbor on the western 
coast of India is one of the finest natural shelters in 
the world and is only rivaled in beauty by the har¬ 
bors of Naples, Rio Janeiro, and San Francisco. The 
city itself is on an island 11 miles long and 3 miles 
broad, but causeways and breakwaters connect the 
island with the mainland so that it is practically a 
peninsula. Along the coast-line to the southward 
a range of mountains, the Western Ghats (“stepping 
stones”) look down on the city. 

Bombay was a Portuguese settlement (1534), but 
came to the English in 1661 as part of the dowry of 
the Portuguese wife of Charles II. It is the capital 
of the Bombay Presidency, one of the largest admin¬ 
istrative divisions of British India. The name comes 
from Bambai Mumba, a Hindu goddess. 

The city is today the second largest in India, owing 
to its position on the European trade route to the 
East. The opening of the Suez Canal increased its 
prosperity and importance. It is the terminus of 
important railways, and it's mills for cotton cloth, 
developed during the last half-century, have made 
Bombay a great manufacturing center. 

Bombay boasts many of the finest buildings in 
India, both public and private, including the finest 
and largest hotel modeled on the American plan. 
The university is one of the oldest in India, and the 
city is a great educational center. Bombay is the 
headquarters of the British East India fleet, and to 
her docks come the largest ocean steamers from all 
parts of the world. In the bazaars are found repre¬ 
sentatives of not only every race in India but of 
every type of Asiatic and European. 

The main European quarter is the old district 
known as the Fort, though there are many pleasant 
hilly sections overlooking the sea that are full of 
handsome modern villas. On one of these desirable 
sites, Malabar Hill, are the old Towers of Silence, 
where the Parsees deposit their dead to be devoured 
by vultures. The Parsees are descendants of a body 
of followers of the ancient Zoroastrian religion who 
fled from Persia to India about the 8th century 
because of Mohammedan persecution. Though they 
number less than 100,000, they are the richest and 
most influential group in the large native community, 


many of their millionaires rivaling our own in wealth 
and public spirit. Population of the city, about 
980,000. 

Bonaparte. What other household has numbered 
among its sons and daughters so many kings and 
queens as did the famous Corsican family of Bona¬ 
parte, whose Italian origin is shown by the original 
spelling of their name, “Buonaparte”? 

The characteristics which made members of this 
family, in the early 19th century, rulers of a great 
part of Europe were probably inherited from their 
strong-willed mother. Her husband was a lazy, 
pleasure-loving, impractical man, who afforded her 
little aid in the rearing of their eight children, and 
who died in 1785. But she, according to her famous 
son Napoleon I (see Napoleon I), possessed “a man’s 
head on a woman’s body.” She was endowed with 
good health, ceaseless energy, and a strong will, and 
these characteristics were manifested strikingly in 
the military genius of her second son. She lived to 
witness his glory and his fall, and even survived him 
by 16 years. But she never fitted into the altered 
family fortunes. Though given immense wealth and 
the title Madame Mere (Mother), she lived in such 
retirement and strict economy as to make her unpopu¬ 
lar in France. Her last days were spent in Rome, 
whence she wrote a pathetic letter to the rulers of 
Europe begging for her son Napoleon’s release from 
captivity. She died in 1836, after being almost blind 
for some years. 

A Family of Kings and Queens 

The eldest of her family, Joseph (1768-1844), was 
a man of culture and talent whose chief bent was 
towards literature. When he was made king of 
Naples by his brother Napoleon, Joseph introduced 
many much-needed reforms in that land. His 
troubles began when his imperious brother took the 
throne of Naples from him and gave him that of 
Spain. Joseph was unable to suppress the rebels of 
that kingdom, and was driven from his throne in 
1813. After the battle of Waterloo, with the crash 4 
of the family fortunes, he found a place of refuge in 
America, and resided in Bordentown, N. J., for some 
time. He died in Florence, Italy, in 1844. 

Unlike Joseph, who was exceedingly anxious for 
power, Napoleon’s second brother, Lucien (1775- 
1840), was an ardent republican, took little interest 
in his brother’s conquests, and often quarreled with 
him. He never ruled a kingdom, although he held 
from the pope the title of Prince of Canino. He died 
in Rome in 1840. 

Next to Napoleon I, Louis Bonaparte (1778-1846) 
ranks in interest in this royal family. He was king 
of Holland by gift of his great brother, and was father 
of Napoleon III (see Napoleon III), second emperor 
of the French. When King Louis could not rule his 
country in the interests of its people he resigned his 
throne in 1810 and retired to Italy. A sentimental 
interest also attaches to Louis as the husband of 
Hortense, daughter of the Empress Josephine. 


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BONE 



1 BONAPARTE 

A kindly and sensitive nature, he was noted in his 
after-life for his philanthropy. 

The youngest son of this illustrious family was 
Jerome (1784-1860), at one time king of Westphalia, 
a kingdom created by Napoleon in eastern Germany. 
Before attaining this royal dignity, Jerome had been 
in service in the French navy, and on one expedition 
had taken refuge from his English pursuers in the 
United States. While in this country he married 
Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore, in spite of Napo¬ 
leon’s protests. The marriage was soon annulled 
by order of his imperial brother, and Jerome married 
a German princess; but from the first alliance sprang 
a prominent Baltimore family whose best-known 
member is Charles Joseph Bonaparte, secretary of 
war and later attorney-general of the United States 
in President Roosevelt’s cabinet. 

Napoleon’s Sisters and What Became of Them 

There were, besides the five boys, three girls in 
the family—Elisa, Marie Pauline, and Caroline— 
all of whom shared in their brother’s glory. Caroline, 
who was married to Napoleon’s general, Murat, even 
attained to the dignity of queen of Naples, for Murat 
was given that throne by Napoleon when Joseph 
Bonaparte was transferred to Spain. When her 
husband was shot, following the final fall of the 
Bonapartes, Caroline retired to Trieste, in Austrian 
territory, where she died in 1839. Elisa (1777-1820) 
married a Corsican who was made grand duke of 
Tuscany. 

Pauline (1780-1825), the gayest and most beauti¬ 
ful of the girls of the family, was long a thorn in 
the flesh to her imperial brother. She was married 
to Prince Borghese in Italy, but when Napoleon 
was removed to Elba, in 1814, she and her mother 
joined him there. She is even said to have expressed 
a desire to share his exile to St. Helena, when Napo¬ 
leon was sent to that remote island following the 
failure at Waterloo of his attempt to recover his lost 
power. She died of cancer in 1825. (See also 
'Napoleon I; Napoleon III.) 

BONDS. When a corporation or a government 
borrows money, it usually issues written or printed 
promises under seal to repay it at the end of a stated 
period, and to pay in the meantime a specified rate 
of interest per year. Such an evidence of debt is 
called a bond. (See Stocks and Bonds.) The word 
comes from the verb “to bind,” and is used in other 
senses also—as “bail bonds” (security to appear for 
trial); “surety bonds” (given by officials who handle 
money as a guarantee of their honesty); “bonded 
warehouses” (government warehouse where imported 
goods or alcoholic liquors are placed pending payment 
of revenue taxes). 

BONE. The hard tissue of which animal skeletons 
are made is called bone. It is heavier than water 
and varies from a grayish white to a pinkish color. 
It is composed of two classes of substances. One is 
the inorganic or mineral matter; this forms 65 to 70 
per cent, with calcium and magnesium phosphate 


predominating. These are the substances which give 
hardness to the bone. The other substances making 
up the bone are known as organic or animal sub¬ 
stances. They form the remaining 30 to 35 per cent, 
and are in the form of ossein, proteids, and fats; it is 
these substances which give toughness to the bones. 
Bones contain 
also a varying 
quantity of water 
—that is, a spongy 
bone has more wa¬ 
ter than one less 
porous, and the 
bones of a young 
person have more 
than those of old 
age. Arab children 
are said to make 
good bows from 
the ribs of camels. 

If we burn a bone 
the animal sub¬ 
stance is consumed 
and the mineral is 
left. It retains its 
original shape but 
is extremely frail 
and brittle. It is 
also white in color. 

If we put a bone 
in a weak solution 
of hydrochloric acid, the mineral substance is dis¬ 
solved out and we have left the animal. It also 
shows the original shape of the bone, but is very 
tough, soft, and flexible; indeed, a long bone so 
treated can be tied into a knot. 

The entire bony system is pierced throughout by 
a rich network of extremely fine canals. These are 
filled with lymph, and hence the bone substance is 
constantly bathed in this life-giving fluid. Blood¬ 
vessels enter the bones to renew the lymph. Bone is 
alive and is kept alive just as the other organs are. 

Bone marrow is the source of much blood-building 
material. It is pervaded by a network of connective 
tissue, in which are found the cells which make blood 
corpuscles, the red marrow developing the red cor¬ 
puscles. This bone marrow is rich in proteids and 
fats, which makes it highly nutritious when eaten. 

Bones grow in a peculiar manner. Cartilage or 
gristle first appears, a form of modified connective 
tissue; then the deposit of mineral substance begins, 
and the bone grows in girth by layers—somewhat 
like the successive rings under the bark of a tree— 
becoming harder and more brittle. 

There are many commercial uses to which animal 
bones are put. From them we make buttons, knife 
handles, and the like; also bone ash, commercial 
fertilizers of several kinds, and bone black or animal 
charcoal. This last is made by removing the fats 
from the bone first—either by boiling or by a solvent; 


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452 


THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG 
WAY OF SETTING BONES 



A bone set like that on the right is not 
only easily broken again, but will make 
the limb crooked and shorter than the 
other one. 








Commercial Uses of Bones 



BONHEUR 





ims, one of Kosa Bonheur’s most famous paintings, depicts a familiar scene in Nivernais, a province nearly in the center of France 
where the peasants still employ oxen. Notice how the artist has brought out the slow but powerful movement of these great creatures. 


then heating or charring the remainder with the air 
excluded. When ground, the bone black is used 
principally in sugar refining. If considerable meat 
and other animal refuse be left with the bones a 
variable product is made, known as bone tankage. 
This is extensively used in mixed fertilizers. (For 
the bones of the human body see Skeleton.) 


BONHEUR ( bon-dr '), Marie Rosalie (1822-1899). 
What great artist had a private menagerie? Any 
schoolchild could guess, for all know the animal pic¬ 
tures of the Frenchwoman Rosa Bonheur, though all 
may not know that young lions followed her about 
like dogs and pined during her absence, or that wild 
chamois, goats, deer, gazelles, monkeys, and many 



This painting by the great French animal artist is known as ‘The Shepherd of the Pyrenees’ and is one of the best examples of her 
work. A painter can study it for hours and constantly find new things to admire. Notice that although she was first of all a painter 
of animals, Mile. Bonheur handled landscape with equal skill. An artist devoting his life to landscape could not have handled 
better those distant mountain peaks with their cloud mists and their snows, nor the dreary landscape of tumbled rocks and sparse 

vegetation in the foreground. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

453 








other animals had their quarters in her county home 
at By, in the forest of Fontainebleau near Paris. 

This painter studied her animals at first hand. 
Her father, a struggling artist of Paris and her only 
teacher, was so interested in the art of his children 
that, though their home was up five flights of stairs, 
he always provided some pet for Rosa and her sister 
and two brothers to sketch. They spent hours in 
art galleries copying pictures of the great artists, but 
Rosa liked best to catch the quick movements and 
changing expressions of living creatures. So, dressed 
in her brother’s clothes, she went often to the stock- 
yards of Paris; there with her short hair and strong 
features she easily passed as a boy and was freely 
admitted even to the slaughtering pens, where she 
studied the anatomy of the animals until she knew 
their bodily structure perfectly. 

When only 18 years old her picture of two rabbits 
was accepted for the annual saldn, or exhibition of 
French artists, in Paris. Five years later from the 
same institution she received a gold medal. When it 
was presented to her in the name of King Louis 
Philippe, the girl replied, “Thank the King for me 
and tell him I expect to do better.” Four years later 
she ranked as the first animal painter of the day. 

When 34 years old the income from her pictures 
enabled Mademoiselle Bonheur to establish a beau¬ 
tiful country home at By, where, except for occasional 
sketching trips, she spent the remainder of her life. 
Many medals and honors were bestowed upon her, 
and she was the first woman to be made an officer of 
the Legion of Honor. 

Among the many paintings that have brought fame to 
Rosa Bonheur are ‘Deer in the Forest’, and ‘Weaning the 
Calves’, which, with the well-known ‘Horse Fair’, now hang 
in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. The cele¬ 
brated ‘Horses Threshing Corn’, showing ten life-sized 
horses, was at the time of its execution the largest animal 
picture ever painted. 

Boniface, ( bdn'i-fds ), Saint (680-754). While the 
good Pope Gregory the Great sat in Peter’s chair at 
Rome, and Charles Martel, the “hammer” of the 
Moors, was mayor of the palace in the land of the 
Franks, the German worshipers of Woden and Thor 
were slowly being won to Christianity through the 
patient labors of a native of England whom we know 
as Saint Boniface. For nearly 40 years he labored in 
southern Germany—preaching, baptizing, consecrat¬ 
ing churches, founding monasteries, and everywhere 
imposing better order on the clergy and establishing 
the authority of the Pope. He and his companion 
monks bore hardships without number, from fire and 
flood and famine in a savage land; and at last he 
crowned his fife of heroic labor and sacrifice by suffer¬ 
ing martyrdom at the hands of the heathen in what 
is now Holland. 

Here is one interesting scene out of many in the 
life of this great missionary; the place is a gloomy 
forest in the heart of Germany, in which stood a 
sacred oak whose massive trunk and branches made 
it an object of wonder to every beholder. Under it 


priests of Woden and Thor still performed their rites 
of heathen worship. 

“Down with that tree,” cried Boniface, “for it is 
an altar to false gods!” 

But the pagans called down the curses of their 
deities upon anyone who should touch the tree, and 
no one dared to lift the ax against it. 

Then said Boniface: “Behold, I will chop it down 
myself,” and fearlessly he applied the ax. And when 
he had cut into the trunk only a little way, a breeze 
stirred overhead, and suddenly the wide branching 
top was broken off and the huge oak crashed to the 
ground in four pieces, while Boniface stood unharmed. 
The awed multitude accepted this as proof of the 
superiority of the Christian God, and agreed to for¬ 
sake their heathen deities and to become Christians. 
Out of the wood of the fallen oak Boniface built a 
Christian chapel. 

BONIFACE, Popes. The name Boniface was borne 
by nine different popes, beginning with Boniface I 
(530-532). Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was the 
most important of their number. In his pontificate 
occurred a bitter conflict with Kang Philip IV of 
France, in the course of which brutal agents of the 
king seized the aged Pope at his summer home in 
Anagni, and treated him with such indignity that he 
died about a month after his release. Shortly after¬ 
ward Avignon on the River Rhone became, and for 
about 70 years remained, the seat of the popes—a 
period sometimes called the “Babylonian Captivity.” 
Boniface IX (1389-1404) was one of the popes in 
the period of “the Great Schism,” which followed 
the return of the papacy to Rome, while anti-popes 
still held forth at Avignon. 

Bonn, Germany. The ancient town of Bonn is sit¬ 
uated on the left bank of the Rhine, about 15 miles 
southeast of Cologne. Known principally as the seat 
of one of the greatest German universities, it is 
also famous for the charm of its old buildings and 
the natural beauty of its scenery. Pleasant villas 
with pretty gardens reach down to the river, and its 
fine promenades and buildings, including a venerable 
cathedral, make the city a favorite residence for 
foreign visitors. By far the finest of the buildings 
is the former palace of the Electors of Cologne, which 
is now occupied by the university. Founded by King 
Frederick Wilham III in 1818, the university pros¬ 
pered until it now ranks second to Berlin among 
Prussian institutions for higher learning. Prince 
Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, studied at 
Bonn, winch was a favorite place for the education of 
Prussian royalty. The University has five faculties 
—law, medicine, philosophy, and two of theology— 
an agricultural academy, and a splendid observatory. 
The city is also the birthplace of Beethoven, whose 
house is now used as a Beethoven museum. Although 
it owes its importance chiefly to its university, 
Bonn has various manufactures—principally of porce¬ 
lain and stoneware—and carries on an active trade. 
Population, 88,000. 


For any tubject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

454 






“Printing” in Ancient Times 


BOOKS 




WONDER of a PRINTED BOOK 1 


A GREAT poet , philosopher, or scien- 
tist dreams a dream or makes a 
discovery that is of interest to all mankind. 
By word of mouth he can carry his mes¬ 
sage to a few hundreds ; with the aid of 
writing he may reach a few thousands; 
but by the wonder of modern printing his 
book can be multiplied by the millions of 
copies so that his message carries com¬ 
pletely around the earth! “As good almost 
kill a man as kill a good book,” said John 
Milton. Here you may read the history of bookmaking, from the 
clay tablets, or papyrus or parchment rolls, to the present days of 
typesetting machines, photo-engraving, power printing presses, and all 
the elaborate machinery for binding the handsome books which we 
put in our libraries or carry in our pockets to read as leisure offers. 


OOKS and Bookmaking. “Of making 
many books there is no end,” said Solomon, 
and this is as true today as it was in Old 
Testament times. This is fortunate, for in 
these storehouses of ideas and information the best 
thoughts and the inspiring deeds of men of all times 
are given to us. 



A 


I i 

/urn SJ'J** 0 ’ 1 ” 

r <*Jnun" * "Cnrmfff 

a, t 


The printed and 
bound volume which we 
know today as a “book” 
is the result of centuries 
of development. The 
earliest records of man 
were chiseled on stone, 
wood, or other durable 
materials. The Baby¬ 
lonians impressed 
characters on soft clay 
tablets or bricks, and 
then baked them hard 
in square or cylindrical shapes. The laws of Solon 
were carved on wooden tablets and set up on the 
Acropolis in Athens; and the 12 tables of the old 
Roman law were similarly engraved on stone. Thin 
plates of ivory, bronze, or lead were also used for 
records of public value. These plates were often 
hinged in a form resembling a modern book. For 
brief notes both Greeks and Romans used small 
wooden tablets covered with wax, on which they 
wrote with a pointed “stylus.” When the early 
Egyptians learned how to make a crude paper from 
the stem of the papyrus reed, thev found a writing 
material of far greater convenience than any known 
before, and its use spread gradually through the 
Mediterranean world (see Paper). Its popularity 
was due not only to its cheapness, but also because 
its smooth, glossy surface made possible beautiful 
effects in lettering and ornamentation. 


The common form of a book, when papyrus was 
used, was a roll or volumen, from which our word 
“volume” is derived. The papyrus was written on 
one side only, and was wound around a short stick, 
much in the manner of the maps we use today. 
Sometimes the strip was many feet long. Many 

of these papyrus rolls 


"Ohih b ,*, 

e®s5?a$ 


Wouldn’t you like to own one of these old manuscript 
books, with its beautiful initial letters? This picture 
shows plainly how the vellum leaves were bound 
together with thongs. 


have been found in the 
coffins of mummies in 
the tombs of Egypt. 
The dry air of that 
country, together with 
the cedar oil in which 
the papyrus was steeped, 
has preserved them to 
such an extent that the 
writing is still clear and 
distinct. In reading 
such a roll the reader 
held it in his right hand 
and unwound it, as he read, with his left, at the same 
time rolling up the read portion. The common prac¬ 
tice in bookmaking establishments was to dictate the 
work in preparation to a great number of slaves 
(i librarii ), and each slave made one copy. This 
kept production costs low, and many book shops 
and public libraries existed in Rome in the days of 
the Empire. 

The inconvenience of these long rolls and the per¬ 
ishable character of papyrus at length led to the substi¬ 
tution of parchment and the finer vellum (both made 
from sheepskin), cut in rectangular sheets and bound 
together at one side with thongs. This brings us, 
about the 4th century after Christ, to the form of 
our modern book. 

But for a thousand years longer there were no 
books except those that had been laboriously tran¬ 
scribed by hand. All through the Middle Ages books 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the 


455 


end of this 


work 






















BOOKS 



Printing from Movable Types 


were made only by the monks in the monasteries, 
writing in what was called the “scriptorium.” The 
lettering was often very beautiful, and the beginning 
of each part and sometimes the first words of each 
page were written in bright ink of various colors. 
Here and there might be great initial letters containing 
pictures in most brilliant colors. Such manuscripts 
were said to be “illuminated,” and the colors in some 
of these old books are as vivid today as they were 
when they were written. When the volume was 
finished it was enclosed between massive covers of 
wood, over which leather was sometimes stretched. 
The covers of important works were often studded 
and banded with gold and silver and sometimes with 
precious stones, and were fastened with huge clasps. 
Most of the books of that time were copies of Greek 
and Latin classics and Bibles and church works 
written in Latin. 

Don’t Forget the Faithful Hands that Did This 

At the end the copyist often added a note called 
a “colophon,” telling when and by whom the copy 
was made. “He who does not know how to write,” 
wrote a monk at the end of one manuscript, “imagines 
that it is no labor; but, though only three fingers hold 



An early Christian scholar, seated in the great library in ancient 
Alexandria, is here reading from a scroll, unrolling it with one 
hand while he rolls it up with the other. Beside him is a 
leather case for carrying scrolls. Usually these scrolls had 
labels attached bearing the title of the volume. 

the pen, the whole body grows weary.” Another 
one added this note to his manuscript: “I pray you, 
good readers who may use this book, do not forget 


him who copied it. It was a poor brother named 
Louis, who while he copied the volume (which was 
brought from a foreign country) endured the cold, 
and was obliged to finish in the night what he could 
not write by day.” 



We owe the possession of nearly all the Greek and Latin classics 
we have to the patient labors of such monks as you see here. 
They did their work of copying with loving care, “illuminating” 
the manuscripts with brilliantly colored initial letters. 

In the 11th century, paper made from the pulp of 
linen rags began to find its way into Europe from 
the East. Its use increased rapidly after the inven¬ 
tion of printing, for it was cheap and could be used 
easily on the presses. 

Before the invention of printing from movable 
types, small religious books were sometimes printed 
from solid blocks of wood. These blocks of wood 
were the size of the page, and consisted mostly of 
pictures, with maybe a small amount of lettering 
engraved at the bottom. This method of printing is 
known as xylography as contrasted with typography , 
or printing from movable types. The first book 
printed from movable type is supposed to be the 
so-called “Mazarin” Bible, which appeared about 
1453 (see Printing). 

The Artist-Printers and Their Work 

Early in the 16th century the books became smaller 
in size, thinner paper was used for the pages, and the 
wooden boards of the cover were replaced by paste¬ 
board. Artist-printers, like Aldus Manutius of 
Venice and Caxton in England, designed more beauti- 


F or any sabject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

456 








—--- 

The Vast Book Industry 



BOOKS 


THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER AND HIS SHOP 



In this beautiful painting the artist has shown us a memorable scene in the history of learning. William Caxton, the first English 
printer, is explaining to King Edward IV and his Queen the wonderful new process of making printed books which he had learned 
in Flanders. Caxton had set up a shop in the Almonry of Westminster Abbey in 1476, the year in which he issued his first book 

printed in England. 


ful types and printed exquis'te books, with elaborate 
coverings of vellum, silk, velvet, or other beautiful 
materials, sometimes of ivory set with precious stones. 
The most famous artists of the day made the illustra¬ 
tions, using not only 
woodcuts, but copper 
engravings, etchings, and 
(somewhat later) litho¬ 
graphs (see Engraving). 

The titles were usually 
very long, often covering 
an entire page. Grad- 
ually there came to be 
a wide variety of sizes, 
from the Thumb Bible, 
which is only a little 
larger than a postage 
stamp, to certain church 
books in Spain, which 
are described as six feet 
high and four feet broad. 

At about the beginning 
of the 19th century, there 
was a conspicuous 
advance in the art of 
bookmaking. Better 
paper was used and the 
old hand printing press 
gave place to the steam 
cylinder press. But 
even these books seem poor and crude compared 
with those of today, with their wonderful illustrations 
by photoengraving—often in colors combined with 
high quality paper and clear sturdy type. 


As the art of bookmaking has advanced, so has the 
demand for books, until now the production and 
selling of books is one of the great American industries. 
The costs of publishing high-grade books is enormous. 

It may be interesting, for 
instance, to know that 
the expense of preparing 
this one page alone for 
the press is greater 
than the selling price 
of an entire set of the 
books. 

The book of today 
contains (besides the 
body of the book) a 
title-page giving the 
title, the name of the 
author, the publisher, 
and often the date of 
issue; a preface stating 
the plan and purpose of 
the book; a table of 
content^; and, if it is a 
volume of any size, an 
index. 

Steps in the Making 
of a Book 

What are the steps in 
making such a book? 
When a big printing 
establishment is planning to print a new publication, 
a “dummy” is first prepared, shoving the paper to 
be used, the size of the page, the thickness, and 
binding of the volume. The “typesetting” is now 



Some of the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages not only 
had beautifully designed initial letters but were also adorned with 
illustrations in gold and brilliant colors. In the page reproduced 
here the Magi are shown adoring the Virgin and Child. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index 

457 


at the end of this 


work 











BOOKS 


Why Books Are So Cheap [ 



feUUUMttUH 


Uil.tUlmUMh' 




'Htrrttrfittni'trr*' 






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done almost entirely by monotype or linotype 
machines, and is not only more, rapid and cheaper 
than hand composition, but it does away almost 
entirely with the old laborious process of “distrib¬ 
uting” or returning the type to the “cases” 
after use (see Linotype; Monotype). After the 
“proof” is corrected by the printer and the author, 
the type is made up into pages and sent to the electro¬ 
typing rooms, where copper plates of each page are 
made (see Electro typing). New proofs of these 
electrotyped plates are made and minutely scruti¬ 
nized, so that any defects may be corrected. Then 

EVEN SIXTY-FOUR PAGES ON A SHEET1 




*—- ■ ■ ■■ JBUBBI ■ ■ uUMMUHMSHMk 

This diagram shows how the pages of a book are laid out for printing on a large sheet 
T £ e ? a - ees numbers you do not see will be printed on the other side. 

When this sheet is printed on both sides and properly folded, all 64 pages will be in 
their proper order. 

the plates are “locked up” in “forms” of 16, 32, or 
64 pages each, and sent to the press room. 

When paper was made by hand, the sheets were of 
standard sizes, so the number of times the sheet was 
folded to make the leaves of the book indicated the 
size. If it was folded once to make two leaves, or 
four pages, it was known as a folio; folded into four 
leaves, it was a quarto; into eight leaves, an octavo; 
into 12 leaves, a duodecimo, or 12mo. The folio books 
of course were the largest, and the 12mos came to 
be the usual size. When machine-made paper began 
to be manufactured, in almost any width and length, 


these terms became misleading; so now the size of the 
book is usually expressed in the measurements in 
inches of the leaves. 

How the Pages Get into Their Places 
When you read a book, the pages follow along one 
after another in consecutive order, but that is not 
the way they were printed. Take a piece of paper, 
fold it evenly by bringing the ends together, then 
fold it crosswise, and again fold it in the same direc¬ 
tion as at first. Now number the sheets of the folded 
paper as they would be if they were in a book, from 
1 to 16. You now have a model of a 16-page section or 
“signature” of a book. When the sheet is unfolded, 
you will find the numbers are widely scattered, half of 
them upside down, and eight on one side of the paper 
and eight on the other. The printer, when he makes 
up his forms, must have the plates for the pages in 
just that order, and they must be arranged so that 
when the volume is bound, the top lines of printing 
will be exactly even throughout the book. Often a 
double-size sheet is used, which is printed first on one 
side and then on the other with the same 16 pages and 
then cut in the middle. 

The covers of books today are 
usually stiffened with tar-board 
(called binder’s board) and are cov¬ 
ered with leather, binder’s cloth, or 
cover paper. When no binder’s 
board is used, the binding is known 
as “limp.” A “full leather” binding 
is one in which the back and the 
sides are entirely covered with leath¬ 
er; a “half-binding” has leather on 
the back and the remainder is of 
cloth; a “three-quarters” binding has 
a leather back and pieces of leather 
at the corners. In some European 
countries, it is customary to publish 
most books in paper covers. The 
purchaser, if he cares to keep the 
book in his library, can then have it 
bound to suit his taste. 

Some of the hand-bound leather 
bindings are handsomely decorated 
in gold leaf with elaborate tooling. 
This work requires an artistic taste 
of the highest order, and the book¬ 
binder engaged on such work must 
be an artist and craftsman of great ability. 

What a blessing low-priced books are, and how 
much we may congratulate ourselves that we live 
in the present age rather than in the days when books 
were only the luxuries of the rich! In part this 
cheapening of price is due to the invention of such 
machines as the linotype and monotype; but in even 
larger part it is due to the development of the modern 
printing press, to electrotyping, to less costly paper, 
and to the many machines used in the great book¬ 
binding establishments which turn out our popular 
books by the tens of thousands. 


For any subject 


not found in its alp habetical place 


see information 










Printing 32 Pages in Two Seconds 


BOOKS 


HOW A BOOK LIKE THIS ONE IS PRINTED 

* m 



STARTING ON THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE PRESS.—At the very top you see the edge of a big blank sheet of paper 
ready to start on its journey into the wonderful land of.printed speech. From this automatic “feeder” the sheet passes down 
behind and is wrapped around a cylinder under which rolls the bed carrying the inky type “form.” This puts the printing on the 
sheet. Then a set of long steel fingers scoop the sheet off the roller, holding it flat as you see in the middle of this picture. Then, 
with a sweep, the printed sheet is piled face down on the table on which the man at the left is resting his hand. 



THE PRINTING OF THE PAGES.—Here we see the cylinder and the type “form” mentioned above. Each one of the small 
oblong divisions of the form is a plate to print a page of the book—32 are being printed at once. The whole bed of the press on 
which the form rests moves backward and forward. When it moves back the printing cylinder is raised up and the type passes 
on to the inking rollers—these small black rollers of elastic composition shown beneath the table in the first picture. As the form 
sweeps under them the ink is spread with exquisite evenness over the surface of the form. Meanwhile the big cylinder holding a 
fresh sheet of paper has dropped down again and presses against the form as it comes forward, printing from the inked form all 
those tiny letters and those picture patterns. This photograph shows us the press at the end of one of these return trips, just after 

the sheet has been printed. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

459 




































BOOKS 




Turning Sheets into Volumes 



THE MECHANICAL THUMB 
THAT LIFTS THE SHEETS.— 
Of all the brainy things ma¬ 
chinery does in the making of a 
book, one of the most remark¬ 
able is the work of the feeder of 
the folding machine, shown here. 
Just as you sometimes start 
turning a book page with the 
moistened thumb, that roller 
finger pushes up one sheet at a 
time, while that hooked rod in 
front holds the pile firm. Then 
the tube at the right blows a jet 
of air under the sheet and loosens 
it from the rest so that it slides 
quickly through the folding ma¬ 
chine where the entire 32 pages 
are folded into two separate sec¬ 
tions, ready for the “gathering” 
machine. But the strangest 
thing is yet to be told. If that 
little roller-thumb should happen 
to pick up two sheets, what do 
you suppose it does? It stops 
and won’t do another thing until 
you come and straighten matters 
outl 




1 HJ£ UA1HERIBG AND THE SEWING.—When each of the great sheets has been folded, it forms what is called a 
sjgnature or section, containing 32 pages of the book. All the different signatures are piled in separate stacks at the back of 
the gathering machine you see here. This machine has been “trained,” so to speak, to pick up the successive signatures of the book 
and lay them one upon another 
in their proper order. It seems 
difficult, doesn’t it? But it’s 
really very simple. Those clasp¬ 
ing fingers take a signature from 
each of the stacks at the back 
and lay them on the long table 
in front. But that table moves, 
carrying the piles forward a 
space at a time, so that signature 
No. 2 falls on signature No. 1, 
signature No. 3 on signature No. 

2, and so on, until at the end of its 
trip each pile is made up of one 
copy of all the signatures in the 
volume. These piles now go to 
the sewing machine. 

In the sewing process, the 
signatures are picked up one by 
one by the girl at the left and set 
astride carrier arms which feed 
them into the machine. There 
five needles work at once, stitch¬ 
ing the signatures through the 
middle and also sewing them 
together in a continuous row. 

As they come out on the other 
side of the machine, the girl at 
the right cuts them apart into 
volumes. Skill and care are 
required in this work, for a single 
signature out of place means a 
spoiled volume. 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical 


460 


place 


see information 












PRESSING AND TRIMMING.— The volumes now go into the powerful binder’s press, shown on the left, which squeezes 
all the air from between the pages. Notice how much thinner this makes them! Then the volumes pass under the powerful trim¬ 
ming machine at the right, where sharp knives come down and cut off the rough edges of the paper and trim away the outside folds 
of the signatures. The edges of this book show how neatly these knives do their work. Sometimes, for the sake of artistic appear¬ 
ance, the edges of a book are left rough. Then you have to cut the folds yourself with a paper cutter. 



“MARBLING” THE EDGES.—Here you see how the marbling is put on the edges of books. This tank is filled with a sticky 
liquid. The workman uses brushes dipped in fluids of different colors, and spatters the surface of this liquid with each color sepa¬ 
rately, one on top of the other, thus forming a marbled pattern. Then he dips in the edges of the book, which pick up that pattern. 
Against the wall you see two piles of unbound books, one of which has been marbled. 

the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

461 


contained in 









BOOKS 


Some of the Finishing Touches"] 



GETTING READY FOR THE BINDING 


Here the volume begins to take its bound form. Notice how nicely the front 

. , - --—- ..... vui^ard. This is done in the rounding press which this man is operating. A st 

with a rounding groove presses against the back and a powerful clamp pinches the volume permanently into this position, 
gives the book what is called a “spring back,” which helps it to hold its compact shape. 



STAMPING THE LETTERS OF GOLD. 
—At the left you can see the covers or 
“cases” made from binders’ board and 
binding cloth, with flat sheets of gold 
leaf in place for stamping. Each cover 
now goes under the hot stamping press 
here shown. The stamp is a brass plate 
engraved with the cover design. It is 
heated and then, coming down, presses 
the lettering and the design into the 
cover. The cover in the center has just 
been stamped. After the stamping, the 
operator rubs over the design with a 
spongy eraser, which removes all of gold 
leaf except that stamped in by the brass 
plate. 


For any subject not found in 


■ H U 1/ c ( I C U ( 


462 





































The Book is Ready for You 


AT LAST THE BOOK IS UNDER COVER!—At last those wonderful talking pages and pictures of our book are ready to go 
inside the “case” or cover, which will protect them so well that they may outlast many human lives and go on telling their story 
to the grandchildren of the original owner! We saw on the preceding page how the “spring back” was first shaped. The next 
step was to fasten upon the back with a heavy coat of glue a strip of that coarse-woven cloth called “buckram,” and to paste over 

the middle of that strip a narrow 
sheet of cardboard, leaving a flap 
of buckram projecting on each side. 
This completes the “spring back.” 
Now comes the job of gluing on the 
cover. Now the volume comes to 
the machine shown above, which 
has three revolving plates. The two 
buckram flaps, which will be the 
hinges on which the cover swings, 
and the two end sheets of the 
volume are covered with glue. 
Then the volume is placed astride 
one of the plates, as you see here. 
This plate moves automatically a 
certain distance to the right, where 
it is seized and thrust down. A 
cover from that stack at the rear 
slides into place, and is clamped 
tight against the sticky flaps and 
end sheets. Then the plate moves 
around to the operator, who is just 
in the act of removing a volume. 
If you will examine carefully the 
back of this book and the joints of 
the cover, you will see how simply 
and yet how effectively these vari¬ 
ous parts do their work. Notice 
particularly how they give a 
“spring” to the cover and the 
pages. 

The covers having been added, 
the books are put under presses to 
dry—rows and rows of them at a 
time—so that the covers will be 
nice and straight and fit the book 
perfectly. There are boards be¬ 
tween the books in the presses and 
they have brass, ridges which in¬ 
dent those creases into the covers 
and so make those gates into the 
wonderland of knowledge swing 
nicely on their hinges. The books 
remain in the press from 6 to 24 
hours so that the glue will be per¬ 
fectly dry and the pages will get 
used to their new clothes. Then 
they go out into the world to start 
their life’s work—teaching, enter¬ 
taining, being companions to all 
who care to seek their friendship. 


contained in the Easy 






















































(boomerang 


BORAX 


BOOMERANG. The most remarkable weapon in¬ 
vented by primitive man was the boomerang, used 
by the natives of Australia. It is made of hard wood 
bent into a curve over a bed of hot coals. It is from 
two to four feet long, flat on one side and rounded on 
the other, with a sharp edge. There are several kinds 
of boomerang—for war, for hunting, and for amuse¬ 
ment-varying in size and proportion. The well- 
known “return” boomerang is chiefly used as a toy. 
Instead of going straight forward, it slowly rises in 
the air, whirling around and around in a curved line 
until it reaches quite a height, when it begins to fly 
back again and sweeping over the head of the thrower 
falls behind him. This surprising motion is produced 
by the action of the air on the bulging side of the 
boomerang. The other types are effective weapons 
because of their size and irregular motion, but they 
do not return to the thrower. The natives show 
remarkable skill in the use of this weapon; it is said 
that with it they can almost ciit a small animal in 
two at ranges within 400 feet. 

BOONE, Daniel (1734—1820). The mighty hunter 
Daniel Boone tells us that “it was on the first of 
May in the year 1769 that I resigned my domestic 
happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable 
habitation on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, 
to wander through the wilderness of America, in 
quest of the country of Kentucke.” 

When only a boy he had come with his father from 
his native state of Pennsylvania to their home on 
the Yadkin, on the frontier of North Carolina. 
Pioneer life suited the lad, and he early developed a 
passion for hunting and exploring. As early as 1760 
he had begun his explorations and pushed his way 
as far as Boone’s Creek in eastern Tennessee. Near 
this stream there still stands a tree bearing this 
quaint inscription: “D. Boon cilled a bar on (this) 
tree in the year 1760.” 

Fired by the glowing description of his friend John 
Finley, who in 1767 had penetrated into the border 
regions of Kentucky, Boone and five companions 
set out to explore that country. He was absent 
from home for two years, during which time he was 
once captured by the Indians, his only companion 
was killed by them, and he lived for two months 
alone in the wilderness without bread, sugar, or salt. 

When he returned home, Boone was anxious to 
move his family to Kentucky, which to him seemed 
a second paradise. He had become dissatisfied with 
life in North Carolina which was becoming too 
thickly settled to suit his wild nature, while Kentucky 
was a vast wilderness peopled only by the Indians. 
The fact that it was a “dark and bloody ground,” 
even to the red man, did not worry Boone, for he 
was entirely unacquainted with fear. He had 
learned the ways of the Indian, not only from his 
frontier experiences, but also when he accompanied 
Braddock on his disastrous expedition in 1755. 

Boone’s enthusiasm over Kentucky was con¬ 
tagious. Because he had confidence in himself he 


was able to inspire it in others, and he persuaded 
five other families besides his own to move west. 
At Cumberland Gap they were attacked by the 
Indians and six of their party were slain. Two years 
later, in 1775, they succeeded in reaching their 
destination, on the Kentucky River, and established 
Boonesborough. 

During the Revolutionary War Boone rendered 
valuable aid to the settlements of Kentucky by his 
courage in repelling Indian attacks. At one time 
he was captured and carried to the English post at 
Detroit where he was adopted into the Shawnee 
tribe. When he learned that an attack on Boones¬ 
borough was being planned, he escaped, traveled 160 
miles in four days, and bore a conspicuous part in 
defeating the Indians. 

Boone always had a great contempt for law and 
lawyers, and as a result he neglected to secure the 
legal right to his land. This led to the loss of all of 
his possessions when the state of Kentucky was 
formed. Disgusted with a country which so poorly 
repaid his services, he crossed the Mississippi River 
and settled in Spanish territory 45 miles west of 
St. Louis, in 1795. When this region likewise came 
into the possession of the United States, through the 
Louisiana Purchase, Boone was again dispossessed 
of vast estates, owing to the fact that he had not 
taken the trouble to go to New Orleans to get his 
title confirmed by the representative of Spain. His 
lands in Missouri were later returned to him by 
Congress, because he had “opened the way for 
millions of his fellow men.” There he died, in his 
87th year, surrounded by his children and their 
descendants—some of them in the fifth generation. 

Boone has come to be regarded as the typical 
pioneer—fearless, skilled in woodcraft and the use of 
weapons, yet quiet and mild-mannered. Many fic¬ 
tion stories have been based upon his exploits. 
BORAX. Nine-tenths of the borax produced in the 
United States comes from the famous Death Valley, in 
the desert part of southeastern California. That 
region is several hundred feet below sea-level, and 
contains enormous deposits of this and other salts, 
left by the drying up of bygone lakes. Nevada also 
produces quantities of this useful chemical. Until 
recently, however, the salt lakes of Tibet were the 
chief source of supply, although some borax was also 
obtained from Persia, Chile, and Peru. 

Chemically, borax is a compound of sodium (or 
soda) with boric acid. It is soluble in water and has 
a slight alkaline taste. It is put to a variety of 
industrial uses, especially as a flux in aiding the fusion 
of metallic mixtures, and in welding iron, soldering 
metals, and other brazing operations, as well as in 
making enamels and in fixing the colors on porcelain. 

It is also used as a food preservative. Its power of 
dissolving grease makes it a useful cleansing agent. 

In combination with glycerine it is also used as a 
disinfectant and antiseptic for sore throats and in 
the treatment of thrush in children’s mouths. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical plac, 

464 


tee information 






WHAT AN AUSTRALIAN CAN DO WITH A BOOMERANG 





The Australian “black fellow” can make his boomerang do all these things. In No. 1, he shoots it ahead of him so that it strikes 
the ground makes two loops and then one grand loop through the air back to his feet. In No. 2, it sails through the air and comes 
back again’without touching the ground. In Nos. 3, 4, and 5, it is executing various other air maneuvers more complicated than 
those of the bird-man. No 6 shows how a boomerang with a hook at the end can be made to catch on the shield of an opposing 
warrior and hop right over at him. In No. 7, the native concealed from view is “shooting” a duck. Figures 11, 12, and 13 show 

how boomerangs of different shapes are cut out of trees. 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this 


465 


work 


contained in the Easy 
































BORDEAUX (bdr-do'), France. Thousands of Ameri¬ 
cans who crossed the Atlantic during the World War 
of 1914-18 will remember the port of Bordeaux, up 
the wide Gironde River on the west coast of France, 
as a place of tremendous activity, surrounded by 
great secrecy. They will recall how the ship, with 
lights darkened and escorted by swift destroyers, 
passed through the dreaded “submarine zone,” and 
came upon a shore whose name they did not even 
know; how it entered what seemed like a great bay, 
and how, after sailing 60 odd miles southeastward, 
to where the Gironde becomes the Garonne River, 
they arrived at their port of disembarcation “some¬ 
where in France.” 

They will remember the long lines of newly built 
docks, the vast warehouses, the cold storage plants, 
the extensive railroad yards, where English was spoken 
and the American uniform held sway. For Bordeaux 
was the main sea-gate of the American services of 
supply (“S.O.S.”) which fed, clothed, and equipped 
the United States soldiers fighting in France. The 
giant wireless station—the most powerful in the 
world—begun by the Americans has been taken over 
and completed by the French government. 

Bordeaux today retains many of the railway and 
harbor improvements built by American army 
engineers, and these advantages bid fair to make it 
the leading seaport of France. The historic city has 
always been a great trade center, famous for its 
wines. The harbor is divided by the Pont de Bor¬ 
deaux, a noble bridge of 17 great arches, one of the 
most famous in the world. The city, crowded along 
the left bank of the Garonne, boasts many fine old 
buildings, notably the Cathedral of St. Andre, dating 
from the 11th century, the Grand Theatre, and the 
church of St. Michel, whose bell tower, 354 feet high, 
is the largest in the south of France. Bordeaux is 
also an important educational center and contains 
a library with more than 200,000 volumes. 

The whole city is surrounded by a semicircle of 
boulevards, beyond which lie the beautiful suburbs, 
spread out on vine-clad hills. 

The chief steamship line using this port carries on 
a valuable trade with South America. Besides wine, 
the chief exports are hides and skins, sugar, rice, 
cotton and woolen cloths, salt fish, fruit, and vege¬ 
tables. A large fleet of fishing boats is sent each 
year to the Banks of Newfoundland and Iceland. 

Bordeaux was a flourishing commercial city under 
the Romans. From 1154 to 1453 it belonged, along 
with all the surrounding country, to the English 
kings. In the 14th century the Black Prince held 
his court here. During the French Revolution it 
was the headquarters of the Girondists, and as such 
suffered greatly during the Reign of Terror. 

The government of France was twice transferred 
from Paris to Bordeaux—once during the Franco- 
Prussian War, and once in the early part of the 
World War, when the German armies threatened 
Paris. Population, about 265,000. 

For any subject not found in its 

466 


Borden, Sir Robert (1854- ). The Right 

Hon. Sir Robert Laird Borden, prime minister of 
Canada from 1911 to 1920, was born in the historic 
village of Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, on June 26, 1854, 
of a family which had been in Nova Scotia since 1760. 
After an education in the schools of his native prov¬ 
ince, he became a barrister; and he rose rapidly to a 
place of great prominence in the legal profession of 
Nova Scotia* 

As with so many others in Canada, law proved 
with him a stepping-stone to politics. In the general 
elections of 1896 he was elected a member of the 
Dominion House of Commons for Halifax—a con¬ 
stituency which, with but one intermission, he con¬ 
tinued to represent. During the years 1896 to 1911 
the Conservative party, of which he was a member, 
was in opposition. His great ability, nevertheless, 
impressed itself on the country; and in 1901 he was 
chosen leader of his party in the House of Commons. 
For ten years he fought an uphill fight against heavy 
odds; then in 1911 he reaped his reward when the 
Conservative party swept the country in opposition 
to a trade reciprocity agreement with the United 
States. On the resignation of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 
the Liberal leader, Mr. Borden was asked to form a 
cabinet; and he thus entered on a prime ministership 
which coincided with perhaps the most critical and 
glorious period in Canadian history. 

During his first few years as prime minister, Sir 
Robert Borden (he was knighted in 1914) was much 
hampered by the opposition of the Liberal majority 
in the Canadian Senate; but as soon as the outbreak 
of the World War brought a truce to party strife, 
he got a chance to show the quality of his statesman¬ 
ship. On the declaration of war he offered to the 
mother country Canada’s whole-hearted support; 
and his guidance of Canada’s destinies during the 
difficult but heroic years that followed entitles him 
to a very high place in the honor roll of the British 
Empire. Starting with an expeditionary force of 
33,000 men, he did not stop until he had placed before 
the Canadian people the goal of 500,000 men as 
Canada’s contribution to the struggle. When the 
need for men grew acute, he asked parliament to 
adopt the principle of compulsory military service; 
and in order to carry this measure in the country, 
he formed a coalition with the “conscriptionist” 
wing of the Liberal party. The general elections of 
1917 amply justified his policy; and he was thus 
enabled to carry forward Canada’s part in the war 
to a successful conclusion. The high reputation 
which the Canadian troops achieved in France and 
Flanders was due in part, at least, to the courage 
and wisdom shown by Sir Robert Borden. It is a 
fact of some significance that, among the prime 
ministers of all the Allied nations, Sir Robert Borden 
was the only one who directed the affairs of his 
country from first to last. 

In 1917-19 Sir Robert Borden was a member of the 
Imperial War Cabinet, composed of five ministers of 

Iphabetical place see inf or motion 






BORNEO 



[borgia FAMILY 

the United Kingdom and the prime ministers of the 
self-governing dominions. Previously to this he had 
sat in the Imperial Cabinet, July 1915, the first occa¬ 
sion on which an overseas minister has ever partici¬ 
pated in the deliberations of the Imperial Cabinet. 

On the conclusion of 
the war, Sir Robert Bor¬ 
den went to Paris as the 
chief representative of 
Canada at the Peace 
Conference; and here he 
was mainly instrumental 
in obtaining for Canada 
and the other self-gov¬ 
erning dominions of the 
British Empire due rec¬ 
ognition as members of 
the League of Nations. 

By this time, however, 
the strain of his labors 
during the war and at the 
Peace Conference had 
told upon his health; and 
shortly after his return 
to Canada, he was 
obliged, for this reason, 
to relinquish the duties 
of prime minister. In the 
summer of 1920 he re¬ 
signed and retired to pri¬ 
vate life, handing over 
the reigns of power to one 
of his lieutenants, Mr. 

Arthur Meighen. 

Temperamentally Sir 
Robert Borden was not 
inclined to lend himself to the minor arts of the poli¬ 
tician; but his achievement in accomplishing the 
formation of the Union Government in 1917, in the 
face of strong opposition within his own party and 
upon the basis of according equal representation 
therein to one wing only of the Liberal party, required 
remarkable gifts of patience, perseverance and firm¬ 
ness of purpose. He did not possess the oratorical 
gifts of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and his speeches upon the 
public platform were characterized by earnestness of 
appeal to reason rather than by eloquence. Through¬ 
out the war he acted with great promptitude and 
vigor as occasion demanded. 

Not many statesmen have made fewer mistakes 
than he made. With his scrupulous honesty, his 
conscientious caution, and his sound judgment, he 
gave Canada during the years of the World War an 
administration of well-balanced statesmanship. 
BORGIA ( b&r'ja ) FAMILY. Of all the princely 
houses of Renaissance Italy, none was more powerful 
between 1455 and 1504 than this family of Spanish 
origin, which gave two popes to Rome (Calixtus III, 
1455-1458, and Alexander VI, 1492-1503), and which 
in Caesar Borgia (1476-1527) supplied the perfect 


type of the coldly calculating, unscrupulously wicked 
Italian tyrant. 

Alexander VI frankly used his office to build up 
the power and fortunes of his children, whom he 
openly acknowledged. Trickery, war, poison, and the 
dagger were freely used 
to advance the family 
interests, though histori¬ 
ans now disbelieve most 
of the tales of subtle and 
secret poisonings attrib¬ 
uted to Alexander and his 
son Caesar as beyond 
the chemical knowledge 
of that time. The almost 
royal power of Caesar 
Borgia practically ended 
when his father was fa¬ 
tally stricken at a ban¬ 
quet in 1503, and he him¬ 
self was temporarily 
incapacitated by a mys¬ 
terious illness, which 
their contemporaries at¬ 
tributed to poison which 
they had placed for their 
enemies. 

Caesar’s sister, Lucre- 
tia Borgia (1480-1519), 
was represented by later 
writers as a veritable 
monster of wickedness. 
But she is now believed 
to have been “more 
sinned against than sin¬ 
ning,” and a mere tool in 
the hands of her unscrupulous family. In her later 
life as duchess of Ferrara she showed herself a woman 
of beauty, grace, and gentle manners, as well as a 
beloved patron of artists and scholars. 

St. Francis of Borgia (1510-1572), a later member of the 
Spanish branch of the family, attained fame of quite a 
different sort as the pious and able head of the Jesuit Order. 

BORNEO. If you visit the Dyaks, one of the 
primitive peoples who live along the jungle rivers of 
the island of Borneo, in the Malay Archipelago, you 
will have to sleep in a huge barnlike structure built 
above the ground on high stilts, with a great cluster 
of smoke-blackened human skulls grinning down at 
you from the rafters. For the Dyaks think they are 
honoring a visitor by lodging him in this “head 
house,” where they keep the heads they have trium¬ 
phantly cut from the bodies of their slain enemies. 

“Wild Men of Borneo” Still Pretty Wild 

Although the Dyaks, the former “wild men of 
Borneo,” are today peaceable farmers for the most 
part, they still occasionally go head hunting, and 
they are still ghost-worshiping semi-savages. Over 
their queerly tattooed brown skins they wear only 
the scantiest of coverings, for the climate is warm 


CANADA’S WAR PREMIER 



Sir Robert Borden won international distinction as Canada’s 
Premier during the World War, and as chief representative of the 
Dominion at the Peace Conference. Throughout those troubled 
days he was conspicuous for far-sighted ability and energy. 


contained in the Eaey Reference Fact-Index at the end of t hie work 

467 









[ 


BORNEO 



and exceedingly rainy the year round. Their teeth 
are always stained dark red from much chewing of 
betel nut. They count on their fingers and toes, 
and if the total exceeds 20 they may have to call in 
their neighbors to assemble more fingers and toes. 

These primitive people live in the third largest 
island in the world, for Borneo is exceeded in size 
only by Greenland and New Guinea. Though the 
entire population is only about a third that of the 
city of New York, yet its area is 290,000 square miles 
—nearly as large as that of the three Pacific states, 
California, Oregon, and Washington. 

If you should gaze down upon this vast island from 
a flying machine, you would see it all as one great 
emerald patch of jungle, with ridges of forest-clad 
mountains traversing it irregularly. Threaded 
through the mysterious forests—which are still largely 
unexplored—you would see many silvery rivers with 
small trade steamers and fishing canoes on them. 

If you descend, you find few familiar trees in these 
gloomy woods, forever dark and damp. Here grow 
ironwood, teakwood, ebony, and other valuable 
woods, which form the country’s chief natural 
resource, intermingled with camphor trees, fan palms, 
coconut palms, and many delicate ferns. 

The “Zoo” in the Jungles 

Through these tangled jungles stalk the wild 
Malay ox, the tusked pig, and the honey bear. The 
rhinoceros and the elephant feel their clumsy way 
over fallen tree trunks; and the orang-utan—that 
powerful, human-looking ape called by the natives 
the “jungle man”—swings by his hairy arms from 
branch to branch. Through the lofty tree tops at 
night dart the flying fox and the flying frog. 

For more than half a century a large part of this amazing 
land has been under the absolute rule of a white man. 
This district is Sarawak, a territory as large as Wisconsin. 
Sir James Brooke, an Englishman, in 1840 assisted the 
Sultan of Brunei in putting down a revolt, and in return 
was made governor and rajah of Sarawak. The title is 
hereditary and has been since held by Rajah James Brooke’s 
nephew and grand-nephew, under British protectorate. 

Great Britain also exercises a protectorate over the districts 
known as Brunei and British North Borneo. The latter is 
governed by a British company. By far the largest and 
most valuable part of the island belongs to Holland. Borneo 
has. rich deposits of coal, iron, gold, diamonds, silver, 
platinum, tin, mercury, petroleum, rock salt, marble, and 
porcelain clay. It produces in profusion spices, nuts, sago, 
camphor, gutta-percha, and numerous tropical fruits, such 
as pineapples and bananas. Sugar cane, coffee, cotton, 
rice, and tobacco are cultivated along the coast and the 
rivers. Large plantations of rubber trees have been started, 
and the rubber produced now amounts to about one-half 
of the country’s entire export trade. The Dyaks, the 
aboriginal inhabitants, form the great majority of the 
population. There are also large numbers of Malays, who 
dwell along the coast and are traders and sailors. The 
third important group is the Chinese, who engage in trade 
and mining. Population, about 1,850,000. 

Bos'NIA and HERZEGOVI'NA. In Serajevo, the 
capital of the Austrian province of Bosnia, was fired 
the first shot of the World War of 1914-18—the shot 
that snuffed out the lives of the Austrian archduke 
Franz Ferdinand and his wife, and gave Austria an 


opportunity to seek to extend her sway from Bosnia 
and Herzegovina over the whole of Serbia. 

These two provinces lie in the extreme northwestern 
portion of the Balkan Peninsula, and like their 
neighbors to the south they have experienced a 
stormy career. Although the two cover less than 
20,000 square miles—about twice the size of Vermont 
—they have been coveted by many nations. During 
the days when Rome ruled the world, they were a 
part of that vast empire; but after the barbarian 
invasions they belonged at one time to Hungary, at 
another to the Serbs, and again they were independ¬ 
ent. In the 15th century with the rest of the 
Balkans they fell under the power of the Turks, and 
there they remained until 1877. In that year, with 
the aid of Russia in the Russo-Turkish War, they 
gained the right of self-government from Turkey. 
But at that point the Great Powers of Europe inter¬ 
fered, and by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), Bosnia and 
Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to“occupy” 
them and so keep order. “Occupation” became 
ownership in 1908, when Austria calmly annexed 
the two provinces to her own territory, and kept 
them until the World War once more gave them their 
freedom. Then they merged their fortunes with the 
new state, Jugo-Slavia. (See Jugo-Slavia.) 

Oppressed as they have been under the heel 
of successive foreign powers, the people of these 
provinces have made little progress in industry. 
Their main occupations are agriculture, mining, 
and forestry, and their chief exports are wheat, hay, 
potatoes, prunes, raisins, iron, and timber. 

The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina in official 
Austrian documents were called “Bosniaks,” but they 
themselves refused to use the name. A third of the 
2,000,000 inhabitants were followers of Mohammed 
and called themselves Turks. The members of the 
Roman Catholic Church chose the name of Latins, 
while the adherents of the Greek Church were desig¬ 
nated as Serbs. The existence of such racial and 
religious differences is one of the many difficulties in 
the creation of the new Jugo-Slav state. 

BOSPORUS. The beautiful river-like strait of the 
Bosporus (or Bosphorus) is hardly less famed than 
the world-famous city of Constantinople, which com¬ 
mands its southern entrance. It lies between the 
Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and forms part 
of the dividing line between Europe and Asia Minor. 
For a distance of 11 miles the channel of the Bosporus, 
from one-third of a mile to two miles broad, winds in 
and out through a picturesque landscape dotted .with 
cypresses, laurels, and ancient plane-trees, while the 
shores themselves are lined with towns and villages, 
antique towers and modern forts, and lovely palaces 
and summer homes of wealthy Constantinople resi¬ 
dents. The Golden Horn, an inlet on the European 
side, forms the harbor of Constantinople. 

The word “Bosporus” comes from the Greek and 
means “ox-ford,” suggested by the legend that the god¬ 
dess Io swam across the strait in the form of a cow. 


For any tubject 


not found in iti alphabetical place tee information 

468 









| An Endless Stretch of RooTs ft 


BOSTON 


Historic Boston 

&n <> lan cl’s 
c 7\^e trop olis 




DOSTON, Mass. 

Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, one of Boston’s 
wittiest sons, once said: 

“Boston State House 
is the hub of the Solar 
System; you couldn’t pry 
that out of a Boston man 
if you had the tire of all 
creation straightened out 
for a crowbar.” Perhaps 
the Bostonian of today 
no longer believes that 
the hub of the universe 
visibly projects at the 
peak of Beacon Hill; 
but he has a pride in 
his native city, in its 
brave and romantic past, in its culture and literary 
traditions, in its splendid and prosperous present, 
which finds an echo in the hearts of all Americans. 
For here trod the Puritan fathers, John Winthrop and 
Cotton Mather; in Boston halls resounded the patri¬ 
otic oratory of James Otis, the Adamses, and other 
Revolutionary leaders; and on every hand are memo¬ 
rials of Boston’s notable part in America’s history. 
So this fine and mellow old city, where the memories 
of three centuries survive undimmed in the midst of 
20th century bustle and din, is a precious heritage 
to the whole nation. 

The great gilded dome of the Massachusetts State 
House, like a ball of fire hung high in the air, is 
the most conspicuous object which meets the visitor’s 
eyes, whether he approaches Boston by land or by 
sea. Ascend to the cupola which crowns the dome, 
and you will behold a scene never to be forgotten. 


To the east your eye will 
sweep out over the island- 
dotted harbor, crowded 
with giant liners and 
freighters from across 
the Atlantic, with the 
smaller vessels that ply 
between the cities of the 
Atlantic coast, with 
ferries, fishing craft, and 
pleasure yachts. Then as 
you slowly circle around, 
gazing far out to the 
horizon line, you will see 
an almost solid mass of 
roofs stretching north, 
west, and south, like 
one vast city. Within 
the range of your eye live a milli on and three- 
quarters of people—nearly half the entire population 
of Massachusetts. 

Boston itself covers only a small part of this dis¬ 
trict, having an area of 29,000 acres,—less than that 
of many a far less populous American city—but 
within a radius of ten miles beyond its limi ts he 
about 20 towns and villages, so closely built that the 
casual visitor cannot tell when he passes from one to 
another. These many little independent units jeal¬ 
ously preserve their separate existence, though for 
all practical purposes they form a single metropolitan 
area, with the result that their park, water supply, 
and the main drainage and sewerage systems are 
controlled by state-appointed commissions. 

Memories of a Glorious Past 
Now look more closely at the city which lies at 
your feet. What memories crowd upon the mind as 


'inHE anxious mariner off the rock-bound New England 
coast who detects through the night the flashing signal 

- -— {“1-4-3”) breathes a sigh of relief, for he knows 

that before him is Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, and he has 
his bearings for the entrance to Boston harbor. Every 
16 seconds this famous lighthouse sends forth to sea 
its signal of warning and guidance. Minot’s Ledge 
is a sunken reef five miles off the Massachusetts 
coast. It was formerly one of the greatest dangers to 
navigation in the world, and the difficulties of constructing 
a lighthouse here were enormous. An iron structure 
built in 1849 was destroyed by a terrible storm within 
two years. Later, five years and endless pains were 
required to construct the present 88-foot granite shaft, 
whose stones are dovetailed and bolted together. This 
lighthouse is the key to Boston’s sea-borne commerce, 
on which rests much of this great city’s industries and 
prosperity. It may fittingly stand as the beacon light to 
guide us into the accompanying article. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 







Splendid Buildings Old and New 


f B O S T Q~N 

your eyes travel from one famous scene to another! 
Where else in America will you find so many relics 
of a great and glorious history, so many memories 
of illustrious men and illustrious deeds? 

The State House where you have taken your stand 
is on Beacon Hill, not far from the center of the 


Here criminals and Quakers were executed in the 
early days of Massachusetts Colony, here the British 
troops drilled before the battles of Bunker Hill and 
Lexington, and here the philosopher Ralph Waldo 
Emerson pastured his mother’s cow, for up to 1830 
the sedate folk of Beacon Hill used to send their 



Ihe Boston Public Library is built in Italian Renaissance style and surrounds an open court containing a fountain. Over 
the main entrance are reliefs by Saint Gaudens. The interior is decorated with mural paintings by Abbey, Sargent, 

Puvis de Chavannes, and other famous artists. 


northward-pointing peninsula on which old Boston 
was built. Beacon Hill has been called the citadel of 
Boston aristocracy, for along its steep narrow streets 
are rows of serene and beautiful old dwellings in 
which have lived many of the men who have made 
American political and literary history. Here you 
may see the house in which the historian Parkman 
wrote for 20 years; in another Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
wrote his ‘Story of a Bad Boy’; others have been the 
homes of Motley and Prescott; Ticknor and Alcott; 
Pinckney and Channing; Julia Ward Howe and 
William Dean Howells, and other famous persons. 

Some distance beyond the foot of the hill to the 
west you see the beginning of the splendid wide 
embankment along the St. Charles River, which is 
one of the many notable public improvements of the 
last generation which have made Boston a place of 
beauty. To the southwest is the famous Common, a 
tree-dotted expanse of 48 acres in the heart of the 
city, with the smaller Public Gardens adjoining. 


cattle to the Common to graze. Some of the famous 
men who often trod the Common in the days when 
the nation was in the making lie buried in the little 
Old Granary burying ground just to the northwest. 
There are the graves of Samuel Sewall, the parents of 
Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, James Otis, and 
Samuel Adams. 

Straight on past the Common and the Public Gar¬ 
dens along the broad Charles lies the fashionable 
Back Bay district, once a salt marsh but long since 
reclaimed at the expense of forests of timber, quarries 
of granite, and mountains of gravel. On the other 
side of the river you catch sight of the ivy-covered 
red brick buildings of Harvard University, lying in 
the heart of Cambridge, the most celebrated of Bos¬ 
ton’s suburbs (see Cambridge). Not far from the river 
is stately Commonwealth Avenue, 240 feet wide, 
with its strip of green parkway down the center 
adorned by statues of famous men. This is one of the 
links in Boston’s famous park system, which girdles 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

470 















BOSTON 


f The Sanctuary of Freedorn 




r Old 
North 
Church 




Of the many historic sites in and around Boston, some of the most interesting are here shown,—the Paul Revere house, the Old 
North Church from the spire of which tradition says the lanterns were hung on the night of that famous ride, the Old State House, 
Faneuil Hall, and the great granite shaft commemorating the heroism of the men who fought on Bunker Hill. The shaft is 220 
feet high and inside of it is a stairway by which you can reach the summit. 








He H 



nraui •• r 


the city with two rings of parks and playgrounds and 
boulevards so that there is no part of the whole 
metropolitan area without its breathing place. A few 
blocks south of Commonwealth Avenue is the 
scarcely less famous Boylston Street, with its many 
magnificent public buildings, churches, and hotels. 
About half a mile down it broadens into the green 
triangle of Copley Square, where you see one of the 
most famous groups of modern buildings in America. 
Here is the great Public Library, the second largest 
library of America and the largest circulating library 
in the world, adorned with mural paintings by Puvis 
de Chavannes, Edwin Austin Abbey, and John Singer 
Sargent. Opposite the library is one of the finest 
examples of ecclesiastical architecture in America, 
Trinity church, with its beautiful decorations and 

contained in the Easy Reference 


stained glass windows by La Farge, William Morris, 
and Burne-Jones. Two other imposing structures 
also adorn Copley Square, the old Museum of Fine 
Arts and the New Old South Church. Boston Uni¬ 
versity is a block beyond the square, and the famous 
Latin School, the oldest school in the country (founded 
in 1635), is a few blocks to the south. Along Hunting- 
ton Avenue, one of the streets which meet at Copley 
Square, are many other notable buildings, among 
them Mechanics Hall, the mother church of Christian 
Science, Symphony Hall, the Opera House, and the 
Museum of Fine Arts, which has one of the world’s 
greatest art collections. 

Circling farther around the cupola to the south and 
east, you see at your feet the maze of narrow crooked 
streets that make up the business center. Washing- 

F act-index at the end of this work 

471 



























? | Great Manufacturing Interests'] 


| B OSTON 

ton Street is the most congested thoroughfare in the 
country, and several others are so narrow that traffic 
is permitted in only one direction. This, one of the 
oldest parts of Boston, is rich in historic buildings and 
associations. Here is the Old State House (1748), 
the seat of royal government of Massachusetts during 
the provincial period, now a historical museum. 
Under its balcony took place the fateful “Boston 
Massacre” of 1770, when ten citizens lost their lives 
in an encounter with the British soldiery. Not far 
away is Faneuil Hall (1763), the “cradle of American 
liberty,” where the patriots often met during the 
Revolutionary period, and where in later times Web¬ 
ster, Choate, Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and Everett 
made the air ring with the thunders of their oratory. 
Old South Church, where Benjamin Franklin was 
baptized and where so many patriotic meetings were 
held that it gained the title of the“ sanctuary of free¬ 
dom,” stands in the midst of a group of modern office 
buildings that far overtop its slender wooden spire. 
Tucked away in another corner is the old pillar- 
fronted King’s Chapel (1749), where General Wash¬ 
ington sat one day in 1789 when an oratorio was given 
in his honor. In the little burying ground adjoining 
are the graves of John Winthrop and John Cotton. 

Looking northward to the site of the original city 
—now a crowded foreign district—you will make out 
the tower of Christ Church (also called Old North 
Church), the oldest church of the city (1723), whence 
it is supposed the lanterns were shown for Paul 
Revere’s famous ride. Revere’s house too is still 
standing, not far away, a little two-story building 
with a steep roof, almost lost among Italian shops 
and tenements. In Copp’s Hill burial ground 
beyond Christ Church are the tombs of the Mathers. 

Where Bunker Hill was Fought 

Across the narrow dock-lined stretch of water, 
spanned by many bridges, that separates the North 
End from Charlestown, you see a plain square stone 
shaft rising high above the huddle of roofs. This is 
the Bunker Hill Monument, which commemorates one 
of the glorious episodes in American history. All the 
eastern end of the Charlestown peninsula is given over 
to the vast United States Navy Yard, which has 
stood here ever since 1800. At the piers or out in 
the open water lie scores of warships, little and big, 
contrasting strangely with the famous wooden frigate 
Constitution, or “Old Ironsides,” as it is affectionately 
known, which is moored to one of the docks, glisten¬ 
ing in all its splendor of black and white. 

Such are a few of the historic scenes that crowd on 
your eye as it sweeps over the city. But however 
much we may like to dwell on the greatness of Bos¬ 
ton’s past, we must not forget the greatness of the 
modern city, the capital of Massachusetts, the me¬ 
tropolis of New England, and the seventh largest 
city of the country. Boston is the chief seaport of 
New England and fourth in rank of the seaports of 
the country. It is the chief wool market of the 
country, the chief fish market, and one of the leading 


manufacturing cities, ranking high in the manufac¬ 
ture of shoes, clothing, pianos, organs, and other 
articles. It is one of the most important book-pub¬ 
lishing centers, and also a leading financial center, 
the home of many powerful banks, railroads, insurance 
companies, and mining companies. Several trans¬ 
atlantic steamship companies, besides a host of 
smaller lines, make it a terminus. 

As a center of education Boston is unsurpassed in 
America. Boston University, Boston College, Sim¬ 
mons College, the New England Conservatory of 
Music, the Harvard Medical and Dental Schools are 
in Boston. Harvard, Radcliffe, and the new home of 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are in 
Cambridge just across the Charles River. Wellesley 
College, Tufts College, and other well-known insti¬ 
tutions are in adjoining suburbs. 

The largest of the immediate suburbs of Boston, 
after Cambridge, is Somerville (about 95,000), which 
lies between Cambridge, Charlestown, and the Mystic 
River. The seven hills on which it is built were 
strongly fortified during the Revolution. The city’s 
chief fame is as an attractive place of residence, but 
it also has large manufacturing interests, including 
meat packing and cloth bleaching and dyeing. Med¬ 
ford (40,000), Everett (40,000), and Chelsea (45,000), 
which lie along the farther bank of the Mystic, are 
also important manufacturing centers. In 1914 
Chelsea was swept by a fire which demolished a large 
part of the city, doing $17,000,000 worth of damage. 
Winthrop, at the point of a peninsula, and Revere, 
farther north along the bay, are both attractive resi¬ 
dential places, famous for their beach resorts. 

Brookline (40,000), which thrusts almost into the 
heart of Boston proper, is one of the most beautiful 
and wealthy residential suburbs in the country. It 
still retains its ancient town meeting form of govern¬ 
ment, as does the smaller suburb of Dedham. 
Another city of beautiful homes is Newton (50,000), 
the home of Newton Theological Seminary. Newton 
also has many mills and factories where silks, 
worsteds, and rubber goods are manufactured. In 
Mt. Auburn Cemetery at Watertown are the graves 
of Longfellow, Lowell, Sumner, Phillips Brooks, and 
other famous men. Waltham (30,000) is one of the 
chief manufacturing suburbs, with great watch fac¬ 
tories, cotton mills, foundries, and clothing estab¬ 
lishments. Arlington combines important gardening 
and manufacturing interests with attractiveness as a 
place of residence. Milton has played a conspicuous 
part in many historic episodes, and Quincy (50,000), 
on the South Shore, will always be famous as the home 
of the Adams family, many of whom are buried here. 

The history of Boston is in large part the history of 
Massachusetts. It was founded in 1630 by Puritan settlers 
led by Gov. John Winthrop, and was first called Trimoun- 
taine from its three hills. The name was soon changed to 
Boston, from the town in Lincolnshire, England, whence 
many of the settlers had come, but the original name sur¬ 
vives in "Tremont” Street. 

Boston was the chief center of Puritanism and of learning 


For any .object not found in it. alphabetical place .ee information 

472 






The Great Boston Fire 


BOTANY 



in America. Here were started the first newspapers (1690 
and 1704). The same Puritan spirit which led to the 
punishment of heretics, Quakers, and witches contributed 
largely to making Boston the center of opposition to the 
oppressive measures of the mother country in the period 
preceding the Revolution. The Boston Massacre, the Tea 
Party, and the British evacuation of Boston are famous 
events. In the 19th century Boston retained its leadership 
in educational, cultural, and humanitarian lines. Many 
great literary men and scientists lived in or near the 
city, among them Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Emerson, 
Hawthorne, Holmes, Agassiz, Parkman, Motley, Prescott. 
The city also became the center of the anti-slavery move¬ 
ment. 

In 1872 the city was visited by the greatest of several 
devastating fires which destroyed more than $75,000,000 
worth of property in the business section. In the rebuilding 
many of the narrow and winding streets were widened and 
straightened. For municipal improvements during the last 
generation, Boston stands in the first rank of American 
cities. It was a pioneer in the parks and playgrounds 
movements, and it has largely solved its transportation 
problems by a splendid system of subways, elevated rail¬ 
roads, and tunnels. 

The population of Boston proper is about 750,000. Less 
than 25 per cent are native born of native parents. Boston 
is exceeded only by Dublin and Belfast in the number of 
its Irish population, including those bom in this country 
of Irish parentage. It contains nearly 70,000 Canadians, 
more than 60,000 Russians, the majority of the latter Jews, 
and 50,000 Italians. The change which a century of immi¬ 
gration has worked is interestingly indicated by the fact 
that in this city of the Puritans the most numerous churches 
today are Roman Catholic, with Jewish places of worship 
taking second place. 

BOTANY. It should be understood at the outset 
that botany is one division of biology, or the science 
of living beings, and that it simply means a study of 
biology with plants as illustrative material. 

The history of botany is a very long one, but the 
real development of the science has taken place only 
during the last century. Naturally the first atten¬ 
tion given to plants was to discover those which are 
useful to men for food, in the arts, or in medicine. 
In fact, the medicinal use of plants was for centuries 
the only representative of a botanical science. A 
true science of botany began with attempts to classi¬ 
fy plants. Aristotle and Theophrastus, in the days of 
the ancient Greeks, had classified all plants as trees, 
shrubs, and herbs, and there was no further attempt 
to develop a scientific knowledge of plants until the 
16th century. It was then that students again began 
to arrange plants into groups, but the groups were 
artificial. These attempts culminated in the famous 
artificial system of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus, 
published in the middle of the 18th century and in 
use to the middle of the 19th century. 

Since the days of Linnaeus a great advance has 
been made in constructing what are known as natural 
systems of classification, which attempts to put to¬ 
gether those plants which are really related. As a 
consequence, the subject of classification, or taxonomy 
as it is called, is now upon a very substantial basis. 
Taxonomy is the oldest phase of botany and to many 
it continues to represent the whole subject. It is not 
unusual to meet people who think of botany as the 
analysis of flowers. Of course, taxonomy includes 


the classification of flowering plants, but it includes a 
classification of all other plants as well. 

What the Microscope Did for Botany 

During the latter part of the 18th century a new 
phase of botany began to be developed, which deals 
with the structure and development of plants and 
their organs. This study became possible only 
through the invention and gradual improvement of 
the microscope, by means of which the minute struc¬ 
tures of plants could be investigated. At first bot¬ 
anists interested themselves merely in the structure 
of mature plant bodies; but as there gradually devel¬ 
oped the knowledge of the cell, as the basis of living 
bodies, the field of plant anatomy came into view. 
This has to do ’with the various cell aggregates known 
as “tissues” which enter into the plant body. Still 
later, botanists began to be more interested in the way 
in which the tissues are related to one another to 
form the plant body and its organs, and the science of 
plant morphology began to exist. This last subject 
for a time contented itself with the study of the forms 
of plants and their organs, but presently passed into 
the more important phase of studying the gradual 
development of plants and of their organs, subjects 
which are often called embryology and organology. 
Morphology not merely studies the development of 
structures, but it studies the relationships of plants 
which are thus revealed, and hence is interested in 
what is known as phytogeny, that is, the ancestral 
history of plant groups. 

Plants at Work 

During the time that plant morphology was com¬ 
ing to the front, another view of plants was being 
developed, namely, that which deals with their life 
processes, or the plants at work. A good many 
botanists cared not so much for the structure of plants 
as for the activities of plants, and plant physiology 
began to assume importance. This subject developed 
with exceeding rapidity during the 19th century. It 
is certainly one of the most important views which 
can be taken of plants. 

During recent years still another field of botany 
has come prominently forward, which deals with 
plants in relation to their environment, and is known 
as ecology. Under this phase the necessary relations 
of plants and their organs to light, heat, soil, tempera¬ 
ture, etc., are studied, and also those exceedingly 
interesting communities known as “plant societies.” 

Most recent of all the phases of botany is plant 
breeding. This and animal breeding constitute genetics, 
the scientific study of inheritance. The plant- 
breeder, by hybridizing, selecting, and pedigreeing is 
able to produce new and valuable types of plants. 

The foregoing may be taken to represent the princi¬ 
pal fields of botanical activity today, but there are 
other botanical subjects which are of more special de¬ 
velopment. For example, plant pathology deals with 
the diseases of plants, paleobotany with fossil plants, 
economic botany with plants in relation to the interests 
of man, forestry with the problems of the proper 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

473 






LOOKING INTO THE HEART OF A GROWING PLANT 



A botanist taking photomicrographs 


Watching a leaf‘grow up is 
interesting.This leaf js all 
curled up when“born’ but 
as itdevelops it 
i ^ ee P s uncurling 


Here we see each stage 
of developmentfrom the 


new bud to the grown flower 


The unripefruit is here cut in 
half to show how the young 
seeds rest in 

t ^ their era dies 


Thismagnified view of the leaf 
bud cufm half shows how it 
looks curled up 


The matured flower opens 
upto receivetheair < 
and sunlight J 


The stigma atthe top of 
thefruit receives and 
holds the pollen grains, ^ 
while each grain sends Np 

out a slendertube.This _ ^ 

finds its way into 
m ^heseedchamber 
Ik, m mA and fertilizes, 

a seed i 


InheAnther 
which bears 
the pollen 


WA peep into the pistil after 
ithas ripened into thefruit. 
The stamens,having done 
their work,have disa ppeared 


Botanists study plants in much the same way as physicians studv the human hnHw tl.,. , ,, ... , , , 

examine them with microscopes, make chemical analyses of the nlant’s tissues anH s ® ctl0 . ns of tf. ! j Ete P arts and 

plant anatomy. At the top we see the method by which botanists take «««’, pni-r.fi l \ t0 g i ve V s he , hldd A en s . ecrets of 
is substituted for the lens of an ordinary camera and an intense^ Iht it enl f/eed photographs of plants. A microscope 

pictures, telling the structure and life history of the yellow Water illv illnctrati *** e part to P 1 } oto p a Phed. The remaining 

o,—, p..« r: 


For any subject 


not found in 


its alp habetical place see inf or motion 

474 










BOWLING 



[botha 

cultivation and use of forests. Still further subdivi¬ 
sions of the general subject are common. A bacteri¬ 
ologist is one whose attention is devoted to the study 
of bacteria, those minute microscopic plants which 
cause many diseases and are important in other ways. 
The phycologist studies the algae; the mycologist studies 
the fungi, the bryologist is a student of mosses, etc. 

What the Young Botanist Should Learn 

A real elementary knowledge of botany should 
include something from all the principal divisions 
of the subject. For example, a beginning student 
should know how plants must relate themselves to 
their surroundings in order to live {ecology). He 
should know how plants make food and use it, how 
they are irritable and respond to stimuli, and how they 
produce {physiology). He should also learn some¬ 
thing of the essential structures of the great groups 
so that he may know the make-up of a toadstool, 
moss, fern, flowering plant, etc. {morphology). In 
addition he should have some general knowledge as to 
how plants are put into great natural groups or fam¬ 
ilies, and he should be able to discover the names of 
the most important plants of his vicinity {taxonomy). 
Botha {bo'td), Louis (1862-1919). “I want the king 
and the British people to realize that the trust reposed 
in us has been worthily taken up,” said General Louis 
Botha in 1910, when he became prime minister of 
the newly formed Union of South Africa under the 
British crown. “I hope they will have cause of pride 
in the young South African nation.” 

And yet the man who spoke these words had less 
than ten years before been commander-in-chief of the 
Boer forces in their disastrous war against Great 
Britain. Resisting to the last, when he saw that the 
cause of Boer independence was doomed, he made the 
best terms he could for his people; and in 1907, when 
the Liberal party in England gave the Transvaal 
self-government, he became the first premier. 

The pledge of loyalty he gave three years later 
when advanced to the premiership of the Union of 
South Africa was nobly redeemed in the World War 
of 1914-18. Scorning the attempts of Germany to 
induce the Boers to revolt from the British Empire, 
he rallied his countrymen to the Allied cause, took 
command of their forces, and in a few months had 
compelled the surrender of all the German troops in 
Southwest Africa. 

Botha’s life was crowded with stirring scenes. Dur¬ 
ing his youth he served in wars against the South 
African savages, and in 1899, when the conflict broke 
out with Great Britain, he quickly rose to the supreme 
command of the Boer armies. He died in Pretoria 
during an influenza epidemic in August 1919, mourned 
throughout the whole empire. Of contemporary 
statesmen of the British colonial possessions, none 
ranked higher than General Louis Botha and his 
companion-in-arms, General Jan Christian Smuts. 
BOWLING. From the old outdoor English game 
of “bowls” has developed in America one of the 
most popular of winter indoor sports; for bowling is 


a game that demands of the player great precision of 
hand and eye, and that requires enough exertion to 
supply the physical exercise that many people might 
otherwise lack during the winter months. 

The English game of bowls is played on a smoothly 
rolled lawn, and the object of the game is to roll 
wooden balls along a 40-yard course in such a way as 
to bring them to rest near a white earthenware ball 
called the “jack” or “kitty.” The player whose ball 
is nearest the jack is, of course, the winner. 

The American game of bowling is quite different 
from its English predecessor. It is played indoors on 
a smoothly polished wooden floor, or “alley,” about 
42 inches wide and about 70 feet long. At one end 
ten wooden pins are placed on end in a triangular 
space. From the center of Number 1 pin to the foul 
line, behind which the bowlers must deliver the 
ball, is 60 feet. The player rolls wooden balls the 
length of the alley in an endeavor to knock down all 
of the pins. If he succeeds in doing that with the first 
ball or the first two balls, it counts extra on his 
score. 

The American game is played in three chief ways, 
the difference being largely in the size of the balls 
and the pins used. In the Eastern States, and par¬ 
ticularly in New England, “Boston pins” is the more 
common game. It is played with balls about 5 inches 
in diameter, and with pins about 3 inches in diameter 
and 15 inches high. In the game called “candle- 
pins,” the “dead-wood” or fallen pins are allowed 
to remain where they fall and may sometimes be struck 
in such a way as to help bring down the pins left 
standing. In “Boston pins” this “dead-wood” is 
removed after each shot. Three balls are used in 
these games. 

But the version of bowling that is more generally 
known throughout the United States, and that is 
particularly favored in the Middle West, is the one 
in which large bottle-like pins are used and the player 
rolls large balls between 8 and 9 inches in diameter 
and about 15 pounds in weight. Two or three holes 
in the side of the ball allow the player to insert 
his fingers and grip it firmly as he sends it down 
the alley. 

The Methods of Scoring 

Scoring methods are the same in all the games. 
The score for each “box” is the number of pins that 
have been knocked down. If all the pins have been 
knocked down with two balls, it is called a “spare,” 
and the player may add to the score of ten the number 
of pins knocked down by the first ball of the next 
series. If he knocks all ten down by the first ball 
rolled it is called a “strike,” and he may add to the 
score of that box the result of the first two balls rolled 
in the next box, and so on. 

Candle or Boston pin bowling is a little more diffi¬ 
cult than with the larger balls and pins, and the pos¬ 
sible scores are not so high. In candle pins the score 
of 300 has never been made; in ten-pins it has been 
made many times by good bowlers. 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

475 






BOYCOTT 



| BOWLING 

In bottle pins only two balls are rolled in each 
series or “box,” but the rule as to strikes and spares 
is the same as in candle pins. 

Many clubs have bowling teams of five men each, and 
every large city has its various bowling leagues which 
compete in matches throughout the winter months. 
The sport has been particularly popular in recent years. 
BOXING. The “manly art of self-defense” has long 
been the accepted description of boxing; and it is a 
manly art, for it demands of anyone who masters it 
self-control, strength, agility, endurance, and power 
to coordinate thought and action—all manly qualities. 
More than any other sport, perhaps, boxing tests 
one’s self-control; it almost always happens that the 
boxer who remains cool, who refrains from becoming 
excited and keeps his temper, will “outpoint” an 
opponent who “goes up in the air.” In addition to 
the exercise that the sport affords, there is, of course, 
a large benefit in the self-confidence that it brings to 
the boy or man who, having mastered it, knows that 
he is able to take care of himself in any emergency 
that may arise. 

The proper time to begin learning to box is early 
in boyhood, for the same principle applies in this sport 
that applies to all others—the earlier the start the 
more rapid the progress. The gymnasium floor or 
any open space indoors or out will serve as a boxing 
“ring.” The only equipment needed is two pairs of 
well-padded gloves. 

Some of the rules which have made boxing a clean 
sport are as follows: All of the hitting must be done 
with the gloved fists; butting, kicking, and tripping 
are not allowed; wrestling holds and hitting below the 
belt are also forbidden. The usual length of the 
rounds in matches is three minutes, with one minute 
of rest at the close of each round. If either boxer is 
“floored” by his opponent he must get to his feet with¬ 
in ten seconds or lose the bout. Hitting an opponent 
when he is down is prohibited. These regulations are 
a part of what are known as the Marquis of Queens- 
berry rules, and have done much to maintain the fair¬ 
ness of the sport. 

There is no doubt that boxing is of great antiq¬ 
uity, for it is mentioned in Homer and it formed a 
recognized part of the Olympian games and Roman 
contests. Ancient boxing was with the bare fists, or 
even with the hands reinforced with a cestus of bronze 
or rawhide straps. The use of the padded gloves, 
which is now general in contests, dates from about 
1760. In Y.M.C.A. gymnasiums, schools, and col¬ 
leges, boxing is now encouraged as a valuable athletic 
sport, especially during the winter when there is no 
opportunity for baseball and football. In the interest 
of fair play, boxers are classified according to their 
weights as follows: bantam weight, 116 pounds or 
under; feather weight, 116 to 122 pounds; light weight, 
122 to 133; welter weight, 133 to 145; middle weight, 
145 to 158; and heavy weight, 158 or over. 

Below are some of the terms that are in common 
use in boxing: “On guard” means the position that 


the boxer assumes when awaiting the attack of an 
opponent. Usually he stands alertly poised with his 
left foot forward, his left knee slightly bent, his right 
forearm across the lower part of his chest, and his left 
arm partly extended with his gloved fist pointed at his 
opponent. “Lead off” indicates the blow with which 
a boxer begins his attack. “Breaking ground” means 
giving way before the attack of the opposing boxer. 
“Counter” is a blow given in response to an opponent’s 
lead off, as nearly as possibly simultaneously. “ Upper 
cut” is a short blow delivered in an upward direction 
with the arm bent; this is used when boxing at close 
quarters and is aimed ordinarily at the chin. “Feint” 
is a feigned attack preliminary to the real attack—for 
example, a lead off for the head with the object of 
inducing an opponent to raise his guard and thereby 
open himself to a body blow. “In fighting” means 
boxing at close quarters. 

In training for boxing it is well to take those ex¬ 
ercises that increase one’s agility and quickness and 
that add to one’s “wind” and endurance. Sprinting, 
tennis, and work with the punching bag are examples 
of the exercise that a boxer may engage in with advan¬ 
tage. But of course the best way to become an adept 
is to engage in friendly boxing matches whenever an 
opportunity is offered. 

BOYCOTT. In the year 1880 there was much com¬ 
motion in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. The 
whole of the island was then in the midst of the great 
land struggle, with its demand for the “three F’s”— 
fixity of tenure, or the right of the tenant to keep his 
land as long as he paid the rent for it; free sale, or the 
right to sell his interest in the land to whomever he 
wished; and fair rent, which would prevent the land¬ 
lord from raising the rent unjustly. To enforce these 
demands the Irish Land League was formed, the mem¬ 
bers of which agreed that any landlord or agent who 
refused to grant their demands should be “isolated 
from his kind as if he had been a leper of old.” 

Capt. Charles C. Boycott was the agent in County 
Mayo for the extensive estates of an Irish lord and 
was the first victim of this agreement. From him we 
get the now common word “boycott,” meaning to 
combine against a man or group of men by refusing to 
deal with him, to buy from or sell to him, or have 
social relations with him. In the last sense it is 
about the same as “sending a person to Coventry.” 

Because Captain Boycott would not come to terms 
with his tenants, the population for miles around 
would have nothing to do with him or his family. His 
servants were coaxed or driven away, his food supplies 
were interfered with, and his fences were torn down. 
He was finally reduced to such dire straits that he had 
to leave the country. 

The boycott is now frequently used by labor unions in their 
disputes. English courts have recognized the legality of the 
boycott, but American courts have taken a strong stand in op¬ 
position to it, and a number of states have passed laws against 
its use. Nations sometimes use the boycott against other 
nations, as when Chinese merchants refused to buy Japanese 
goods because of the friction between the two countries. 


For any subject no, u n #n alp h a betic al place see information 

476 






Two skilful boxers standing before a camera illustrated these various features of the art of boxing. There are 15 features here 
shown, but they are by no means all that have been evolved in the long history of this form of athletics, which reaches at least 
back to Homer’s time. The maneuvers of the ironclad knights, which are given so conspicuous a place in literature relating to 

the Middle Ages, were simple compared to the strategy of boxing. 



Jj«w To jemt oppone«r info leaving an 


V « rl^t* MpptrCtft' 


w»#» fcfr t® Jn$ id€ ^ooK fo J++S. 


Opporv«K t*J 

• A ^ 


and co^nferM 


xrcw 


3 a*s+y ^rom a ri<j^ , fo 

Com hTe r rtffi ITfie 


A*S 

apponehtj 

k far 

^ 

rta*y to 

l 6f oik)* 

; T 4 ‘ 


Side .f»srwi5>fri3>*- 

(cfr 

ond jfriwlmj rwdy 


(yjtifp'V'9 ft rrj)*" V idl'd i*} over 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this u)ork 

477 






shown'in^this pTct'ure 1 .” 1 You^hould'^'e'that^he'flagstaff' 1 ^ setTn an^oneT ?nar^ Sl j. n iS ““"h th /i° b >’' can be made ver y easily, a 
of about the same size, paint them white, and on this background Daint the hnurtfL't'h 6 ™ 11 ' 1 !, 0 * th< ? cam P. Then get 17 stones, a 
the stones where the shadow falls at each hour from sunrife tosunset , nu “ be / s - Consulting a watch, plac 

greater accuracy stakes may be placed between the stones— 1 longer stake say for hal/hour, anrf 3 f and quarter hours, but fc 
ho„«. Since the ,en g ,h o. the Oay in conat.n.iy .h.n.i.j, no aim?!. 

than a few days. 


For any subject not found 


in its 


alphabetical place 


478 


i rxr or motion 






























































A Judge’s Tribute to the Scouts 


BOY SCOUTS 


What a BOY SCOU 



to do, something worth doing. It has succeeded in 
doing what no other plan of education has done— 


made the boy want to learn. It organizes the gang 
spirit into group loyalty. 

It provides a sane and happy substitute for occupa¬ 
tions such as Satan proverbially finds for idle hands. 
A famous juvenile court judge once said that he never 
had a scout up in his court for his judgment, and that 
if all the boys in his city were Boy Scouts the court 
might just as well close. Scouting offsets the defects 
and neutralizes the dangers wrought by our over¬ 
civilized modern world. 

A merchant who had been bom on a pioneer farm 
once pointed out the contrast between the old days 
and the new in these words: 

It was worth while being a boy 50 years ago. I could 
ride a horse to water, carry in wood, and drop com behind 
a plow when I was four years old. At 10 I could curry a 
horse, clean a stable, milk a cow, saw wood, hoe the garden, 
and turn a grindstone. I could ride and shoot and swim 
and fish and go on snow-shoes like an Indian; find my way 
in the woods by blazes on the trees and by the stars; catch 
and cook my own supper, and make a good shelter and bed. 
I knew all the wild plants and birds and animals. A boy 
had to rely on himself in those days and be of use to others, 
and it made a man of him. The good old chores and sports 
are all gone. No wonder the boys of today are so often 
good for nothing. 

With “scouting” the “good old times” come back 
again, alike for the country and the city boy. The 
scout learns to know and love the great outdoors 
intelligently. He camps and hikes and swims; studies 
birds and trees and stars; knows how to care for him- 


T NEEDS to KNOW 

BOYS’ club of more than half a million persons, the 
motto of which is “Be Prepared,” and whose mem¬ 
bers are uniformed, drilled, and trained to efficient 
citizenship, with a view to service as embodied in the 
idea of the “Good Turn”—such is the Boy Scouts of 
America. This article tells you what the Boy Scout 
movement is, how you can become a member, the scout’s 
equipment, and the tests you must pass to advance from 
the rank of tenderfoot to that of second class and first 
class scout; also how the merit badges are won. 

self in the open, how to build fires and make camp 
cookery; how to set up tents and make himself com¬ 
fortable and safe even under open skies if necessary; 
how to tie knots and how to use an ax and knife. Be 
Prepared is the scout motto, and preparedness of this 
kind is good training for every man. 

Incidentally a scout also learns self-reliance, re¬ 
sourcefulness, courage, fair play, obedience, loyalty, 
and other so-called “old-fashioned” virtues, which are 
as valuable in the 20th century as they ever were in 
the past. Thousands of ex-scouts served splendidly 
in our American Expeditionary Force, and it is the 
verdict of officers both in the British and Canadian as 
well as our own forces that scout-trained boys almost 
invariably made the best soldiers. Not that they are 
trained to be soldiers. Quite the contrary, for the 
movement is distinctly non-military. But they are 
trained to be men, which is the essential thing either 
in peace or war. 

Good Citizenship and Service Its Aims 
Good citizenship making is the end and aim of 
Scouting. The movement believes that by making 
better American boys, fit every way—mentally, 
morally, and physically—it can best serve the nation 
and provide a vital man-power of brains, efficiency, 
and high moral standard. 

The idea of service is fundamental in the scout 
movement. The daily good turn which every scout 
promises to perform is a small thing in itself, but it 
represents a big thing—perhaps the biggest thing, the 
most redeeming force in the world,—the willingness to 
serve others unselfishly, simply, looking for no reward; 
a service done for the love of service itself. The good 
turn magnified means community service. And every¬ 
one familiar with scouting knows what a record along 
this line boy scouts have, how they serve as traffic 
guides, police aides, messengers, distributors of “liter¬ 
ature,” collectors of newspapers and rubbish, etc.; 
how they have led in innumerable “clean-up,” “swat- 
the-fly,” “walk-rite,” and “city beautiful” campaigns; 
how they have cooperated with fire commissioners, 
park commissioners, fish and game commissioners, 
forest wardens, etc.—active and enthusiastic in every 
undertaking which contributes to the betterment of 
the community and constitutes social service. 

The national service record of Boy Scouts in the 
World War is little short of phenomenal. In the 
Liberty Loan campaigns they sold bonds to the amount 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

479 






The Scout and the Community 


)boy SCOUTS 

of $301,000,000, and War Savings Stamps to an 
amount over $50,000,000. They operated thousands 
of war gardens, worked on farms and in orchards and 
canning factories; located standing black walnut trees, 
collected 100 carloads of gas-mask material, and took 
a labor census for the State of Pennsylvania; coop¬ 
erated with the Naval Intelligence Bureau, with 
the American Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., Jewish Welfare 
Board, Knights of Co¬ 
lumbus, Wa r Camp 
Community Service, 
the Commit tee on Pub¬ 
lic Information, and 
dozens of other patriot¬ 
ic agencies; collected 
books and magazines 
for soldiers; distributed 
30,000,000 pieces of 
patriotic literature; 
rendered remarkable 
first aid and other serv¬ 
ice in connection with 
the influenza epidemic 
and such catastrophes 
as the Perth Amboy 
explosion, besides per¬ 
forming a multitude of 
other services. The 
scout’s agreement to 
“be helpful to all peo¬ 
ple at all times” is not 
an idle phrase. The 
scout reputation for 
service is well earned, 
as everyone will attest 
who knows the facts of 
scout cooperation in 
government and com¬ 
munity activities dur¬ 
ing the past few years. 

Every boy who be¬ 
comes a member of the 
Boy Scouts of America 
takes an oath and sub¬ 
scribes to the Scout- 
Law of the movement. 
allegiance to the flag, 
the boy must promise: 

“On my honor I will do my best— 

To do my duty to God and my country, and to 
obey the scout law; 

To help other people at all times; 

To keep myself physically strong, mentally 
awake, and morally straight.” 

A scout is required to know the Scout oath and law 
and to subscribe to both. But his obligation does not 
end here. He is expected not only not to forget his 
oath and law, but to live up to them in letter and 
spirit from first to last. 

A boy who wants to become a scout should apply 

For any subject not found in its 


to the local scouting authorities if scouting is estab¬ 
lished in his community. Through these local leaders 
he will be given an opportunity to join a troop already 
established, or machinery will be set in motion for the 
organization of a new troop, if the boy knows of others 
who also would like to become scouts. 

Scouting is supervised by local councils in over 400 
cities and towns, and other such councils are being 

constantly established. 
Any man or boy inter¬ 
ested in starting scout¬ 
ing in a community 
should write at once 
to national headquar¬ 
ters, 200 Fifth Avenue, 
New York City, and 
secure the necessary 
information as to pro¬ 
cedure and copies of the 
many available pieces 
of scout literature. 
The official ‘Scout 
Handbook for Boys’ is 
obtainable either from 
local booksellers or 
national headquarters. 

It is necessary to 
have at least eight boys, 
or one patrol, to organ¬ 
ize a Boy Scout troop. 
A full troop consists of 
32 boys—that is, four 
patrols of eight boys 
each. These troops 
must be under the lead¬ 
ership and direction of 
a scout master, who 
must be at least 21 
years of age and must 
receive his commission 
from the national 
council at the recom¬ 
mendation of the 
church, or institution, 
or group of adult male 
American citizens, who make themselves responsible 
for the troop in accordance with the requirements of 
the national council. Each troop has at least one 
assistant scout master, who must be 18 years old or 
over, and must be commissioned by the national 
council. 

Every troop of Boy Scouts is under the supervision 
of a troop committee, consisting of three or more adult 
American citizens, representing the church or other 
institution or group of men, who select the scout 
master and make themselves responsible for the 
execution of the scout program of the troop, and for 
the provision of suitable facilities for the same. 

In a community under a local council, the latter 
unit has general supervision of scout activities in the 


alphabetical place see information 

480 


THE SCOUT LAW 

1. A scout is trustworthy. A scout’s honor is to be 
trusted. If he were to violate his honor by telling a lie, 
or by cheating, or by not doing exactly a given task, when 
trusted on his honor, he may be directed to hand over his 
scout badge. 

2. A scout is loyal. He is loyal to all to whom loyalty 
is due: his scout leader, his home and parents and country. 

3. A scout is helpful. He must be prepared at any time 
to save life, help injured persons, and share the home duties. 
He must do at least one good turn to somebody every day. 

4. A scout is friendly. He is a friend to all and a brother 
to every other scout. 

5. A scout is courteous. He is polite to all, especially to 
women, children, old people, and the weak and helpless. 
He must not take pay for being helpful or courteous. 

6. A scout is kind. He is a friend to animals. He will 
not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, but will 
strive to save and protect all harmless life. 

7. A scout is obedient. He obeys his parents, scout master, 
patrol leader, and all other duly constituted authorities. 

8 A scout is cheerful. He smiles whenever he can. His 
obedience to orders is prompt and cheery. He never shirks 
nor grumbles at hardships. 

9. A scout is thrifty. He does not wantonly destroy 
property. He works faithfully, wastes nothing, and makes 
the best use of his opportunities. He saves his money so 
that he may pay his own way, be generous to those in need, 
and helpful to worthy objects. He may work for pay, but 
must not receive tips for courtesies or good turns. 

10. A scout is brave. He has the courage to face danger 
in spite of fear, and has to stand up for the right against the 
coaxings of friends or the jeers or threats of enemies, and 
defeat does not down him. 

11. A scout is clean. He keeps clean in body and thought, 
stands for clean speech, clean sport, clean habits, and 
travels with a clean crowd. 

12. A scout is reverent. He is reverent toward God. He 
is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions 
of others in matters of custom and religion. 


He also takes the oath of 
Before be becomes a scout 









1. A Scout is trustworthy 


2. A Scout is loyal 


3. A Scout is helpful 


4. A Scout is friendly 


5. A Scout is courteous 


6 . A Scout is kind 


8. A Scout is cheerful 


7. A Scout is obedient 


9. A Scout is thrifty 


12. A Scout is reverent 


10. A Scout is brave 


A Scout is clean 


Here are 12 of the hundreds and hundreds of ways in which a Boy Scout obeys the “Twelve Commandments” of the great scout 
Tables of the Law—examples of trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, kindness, obedience, cheerfulness, 

thrift, courage, cleanliness, and reverence. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

481 




































1 BOY SCOUTS 

SUMMER 



Graded School of Scoutdom 


DELIGHTS OF WOODS AND WATERS 



!°° k at a j P f lac tJ lke this a, J d mach *? or . e » if one were actually there—would lead one to suppose that the Boy Scouts were 
mainly organized for the purpose of getting the keenest possible enjoyment out of life! And this is more or less true- for it i* not 
only m the sport and the outdoor life of the summer camp that the joy of being a scout consists, b “Shi pleasure of ’JSdLiitil 

even better to give than to receive. 


community. The troop committee deals directly 
with its own troop, and is entitled to a representative 
on the local council. Where there is a local council all 
matters which have to be referred to the national 
council pass through its hands. Otherwise a member 
of the troop committee deals directly with national 
headquarters. 

A boy must be at least 12 years of age to be eligible 
to membership in a scout troop. There is no upward 
age limit. Older boys frequently become assistant 
scout masters, and aid in giving troop instruction. 
After five years of continuous service in scouting a 
scout is entitled to the designation of “veteran scout.” 

Classes of Scouts and Requirements 

There are three classes of scouts, known respectively 
as tenderfoot, second, and first class scouts. A first 
class scout is eligible to the advanced ranks of life, 
star, and eagle scout, which require highly specialized 
training and requirements, as follows: 

Tenderfoot — 

1. Know the Scout law, motto, sign, salute, and signifi¬ 
cance of the badges. 

2. Know the composition and history of the national flag 
and the customary forms of respect due it. 

3. Tie the following knots: square or reef, sheet-bend, 
bowline, fisherman s, sheepshank, halter, clove hitch, timber 
hitch, and two half hitches. 

Second Class Scout — 

1. At least one month’s service as a tenderfoot. 

For any subject not found in its 


2. Elementary first aid and bandaging: Know the 
general directions for first aid for injuries; know treatment 
for fainting, shock, fractures, bruises, sprains, injuries in 
which the skin is broken, burns and scalds; demonstrate 
how to carry injured, the use of the triangular and roller 
bandages and tourniquet. 

3. Elementary signaling: Know the alphabet of the 
semaphore or the general service (international Morse) code. 

4. Track half a mile in 25 minutes; or, if in town, describe 
satisfactorily the contents of one store window out of four 
observed for one minute each. 

5. Go a mile in 12 minutes at scout’s pace—about 50 
steps running and 50 walking, alternately. 

6. Use properly knife or hatchet. 

7 Prove ability to build a fire in the open, using not 
more than two matches. 

8. Cook a quarter of a pound of meat and two potatoes 
in the open without any cooking utensils. 

9. Earn and deposit at least one dollar in a public bank. 
(Liberty Loan subscriptions and W ar Savings certificates 
are accepted.) 

10. Know the 16 principal points of the compass. 

First Class Scout — 

1. Swim 50 yards. 

2. Earn and deposit at least two dollars in a public bank. 
(Liberty Loan subscriptions and W r ar Savings certificates 
are accepted.) 

3. Send and receive a message by semaphore, including 
conventional signs, 30 letters per minute, or by the general 
service code (international Morse), 16 letters per minute, 
including conventional signs. 

4. Make a round trip alone (or with another scout) to a 
point at least seven miles away going on foot or rowing 
boat, and write a satisfactory account of the trip. 

alphabetical place see information 


4S2 













VARIOUS PHASES OF BOY SCOUT LIFE 



From the morning bugle to bed-time, life in a Boy Scout camp is a continuous senes of “something doing. ’ In the first picture 
two bovs are passing one of the tests for second class scouts by building a fire in the open.- Below the boy with the bugle the 
scouts are at the noonday mess under the shady tent. The scene in the garden is not a part of camp life, but illustrates one of 
the important contributions made by the Boy Scouts toward winning the World War. To the left two youngsters are engaged 
in a bout with the gloves. Above them a group of three are studying woodcraft, while their picture neighbors are spearing sturgeon 
In a nond Now as a matter of fact (I'll tell you this privately) this “sturgeon” was made of straw for the boys to practice their 
y ' skill upon! 


Building a Fire 








eo 


£ 




Studying * ^ 
Woodcraft 


»—- ■ - ■ : * 




E 


Ten 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

483 































BOY SCOUTS 


Service During the War 





5. Advanced first aid: Knowing the methods for panic 
prevention; what to do in case of fire, ice, electric, and gas 
accidents; how to help in case of runaway horse, mad d’og, 
or snake bite; treatment for dislocations, unconsciousness, 
poisoning, fainting, apoplexy, sunstroke, heat exhaustion, 
and freezing; know treatment for sunburn, ivy poisoning, 
bites and stings, nosebleed, earache, toothache, inflammation 
or grit in eye, cramp or stomach ache, and chills; demon¬ 
strate artificial respiration. 

fi- Prepare and cook satisfactorily, in the open, using 
camp-cooking utensils, two of the following articles as may 
be directed: eggs, bacon, hunter’s stew, fish, fowl, game, 
pancakes, hoe-cake, biscuit, hardtack or a “twist” baked 
on a stick; explain to another boy the methods followed. 

7. Read a map correctly, and draw from field notes made 
on the spot an intelligible rough sketch map, indicating by 
their proper marks important buildings, roads, trolley lines, 
main landmarks, principal elevations, etc. Point out a 
compass direction without the help of the compass. 

8. Use properly an ax for felling or trimming light timber; 
or produce an article of carpentry, cabinet-making, or metal 
work made by himself. Explain the method followed. 

9. Judge distance, size, number, height, and weight 
within 25 per cent. 

10. Describe fully from observation ten species of trees 
or plants (including poison ivy), by their bark, leaves, 
flowers, fruit, or scent; or six species of wild birds by their 
plumage, notes, tracks, or habits; or six species of native 
wild animals by their form, color, call, tracks, or habits; 
find the North Star, and name and describe at least three 
constellations of stars. 

11. Furnish satisfactory evidence that he has put into prac¬ 
tice in his daily life the principles of the scout oath and law. 

For any subject not found in it. 


12. Enlist a boy trained by himself in the requirements 
of a tenderfoot. 

Merit Badges and How They are Won 

A first class scout may qualify in any or all of the 
merit badge subjects, which include a wide range of 
activity, such as bee-keeping, photography, pathfind- 
public health, firemanship, aviation, etc. The 
requirements for these merit badges are given in the 
official Boy Scout Handbook’. There is an appro¬ 
priate badge for each rank in scouting. 

Life Scout Requirement — 

The life scout badge is awarded to all first class scouts 
who have qualified for the merit badges of first aid, physical 
development or athletics, personal health, public health, 
and life-saving or pioneering. 

Star Scout Requirement — 

The star scout badge is awarded to the first class scout 
who has qualified for ten merit badges, including the five 
badges of the life scout. 

Eagle Scout Requirement — 

The eagle scout badge is awarded to any first class scout 
qualifying for 21 badges. These 21 badges shall include 
first aid, life-saving, personal health, public health, cooking, 
camping, bird study, pathfinding, pioneering, athletics or 
physical development, and any 10 others. 

There are at present on record at national head¬ 
quarters over 900 eagle scouts, representing the 
highest rank attainable in scouting. 

Medals for conspicuous bravery in life-saving are 
conferred by the national court of honor. To date 

alphabetical place see information 


484 














BOY SCOUTS 


[ Origin of the Great Movement 



4 gold, 14 silver, and 36 bronze medals have been 
awarded. A medal is also offered for distinguished 
service to wild life. Details of conditions of award of 
this medal are given in the ‘ Scout Handbook for Boys’. 

The Treasury Department has awarded 66,725 
medals, and 10,152 
bars for distinguished 
service in the sale of 
Liberty Bonds; 33,937 
medals, 40,733 palms, 
for War Savings 
Stamps; and 875 
medals for gardening 
service. 

The possession of a 
Boy Scout uniform and 
personal equipment 
is not obligatory, but 
is strongly advised. 

Scouts are encouraged 
to earn their own 
equipment as well as 
their registration fees. 

They are expected to 
keep their uniforms in 
good condition and to respect them as the symbol of 
the things for which scouting stands. The scout 
uniform as authorized by the Boy Scouts of America 
is described as follows in the constitution: 

Hat, olive drab, flat brim; shirt, khaki, coat style, bellows 
pockets; coat, khaki, four bellows pockets, standing collar, 
metal buttons with scout emblem; shorts, or breeches, 
standard khaki material; belt, olive drab web; haversack, 
worn as a knapsack; shoulder knots, 5 % inches, worn in 
colors of patrol on right shoulder; leggings or stockings to 
match uniform. 

Other useful articles of equipment are the staff, 
lanyard, knife, ax, canteen, and first-aid kit, etc. 
Those interested in available supplies and prices 
should consult the catalogue issue of Scouting, which 
will be mailed upon request to national headquarters. 

Other equipment is usually owned by the troop as 
a. whole. It may consist of signaling and camping 
outfits, troop and national flags, books, etc. The 
troop committee is responsible for this general troop 
property. In the event of a troop’s disbanding, the 
committee arranges for the equitable disposition of 
the property. 

The troop committee is responsible for securing a 
suitable meeting place for the troop. This is more 
easily and permanently arranged when troops are con¬ 
nected with an established institution like a school or 
church. In some cases troop headquarters are donated 
by public-spirited men, and sometimes the boys them¬ 
selves build a rough shack which is doubly dear to 
them because so peculiarly their own. The scouts 
often make their own furniture also, which fits in well 
with manual training work done in school, with re¬ 
quirement No. 8, first class scout, and with the merit 
badge in carpentry and cabinet-making. 

Every troop has its own number and colors, which 

contained in the Easy Reference 


color appears in the neckerchief worn by the troop’s 
members. Every separate patrol has also its own 
colors and “totem” name, such as wolf or eagle. Each 
patrol has its own peculiar call, representing if pos¬ 
sible the patron bird or animal. In this way scouts 

of the same patrol 
may communicate 
with each other when 
in hiding or at night. 
It is not considered 
honorable for a scout 
to use any patrol call 
except his own. 

Aside from the 
scout master and one 
more commissioned 
assistant, the troop 
officers are the senior 
patrol leader (an op¬ 
tional office), who may 
be a regular patrol 
leader attached to a 
patrol or, in the larger 
troops, an extra boy 
officer; a scribe 
(secretary), and a treasurer (optional office, may be 
combined with scribe’s work or may be a member 
of troop committee). There may also be a bugler, 
and if desired color bearers, librarian, custodian, 
etc., according to the requirements of the troop’s 
constitution. 

History of the Movement 

Shortly after Lieut. Gen. S. S. Baden-Powell had 
worked out his Boy Scout organization in Eng¬ 
land, in 1908, a group of men interested in boys 
and the eternal “boy problem” met to discuss the 
feasibility of founding an American branch of 
Scouting similar to that worked out in England, 
but adapted and modified to fit American condi¬ 
tions, needs, and ideals. The result of this meeting 
was the organization of the Boy Scouts of 
America. It was incorporated Feb. 8, 1910, and 
was authorized by an act of Congress in June 
1916. At present it is the largest boys’ club in the 
world, having an active membership of about 500,000 
boys and men, as well as an associate membership of 
over a million. 

The movement was founded on the broadest possi¬ 
ble foundations so as to meet the need of every kind 
of boy, irrespective of party, creed, race, or environ¬ 
ment. It recognizes, however, the importance of 
religious training for young boys, insists upon rever¬ 
ence and duty to God, and recommends that troops 
be formed in connection with churches as one of the 
most satisfactory bases of organization. 

It is the plan of the organization, indeed, to serve not 
as a substitute for other natural agencies of boy train¬ 
ing—such as the church and school and home—but to 
supplement and reinforce these agencies in every way. 
It is the universal verdict of those associated with these 

Fact-Index at the end of this Work 

485 


A FIREPLACE IN A CAMP 



The boys that built this fireplace had evidently studied the Boy Scout 
Manual on Masonry to some purpose. This is the camp of the scouts of 
the Congregational church in Waterbury, Vt. The camp is a two-mile hike 
south of the town. Everything is fitted up as neat and convenient as you 
please, with tables, chairs, cooking utensils, and tableware. 







[boy scouts 

troops that the institution with which the troop is 
connected is invariably greatly benefited by having at 
its command the most popular and most practical as 
well as the most ideal system of juvenile education yet 
invented. 

That the scout movement is worth promoting and 
encouraging goes without saying. The nation-wide 
Boy Scout Week, established in 1919 by the proclama¬ 
tion of President Wilson, spread the truth about 
Scouting and the reasons for supporting it from ocean 
to ocean. The public can scarcely spend its dollars 
or its enthusiasm on a better cause than on making 
Young America clean, fit, “prepared” for the future 
in every way. Leaders especially are needed to meet 
the increasing demand of the boys themselves for the 
privileges and pleasures of scouting. Men are needed 
to serve as scout masters and assistant scout masters, 
troop committeemen, and local council members. 
Any man who is interested either in becoming a scout 
leader himself or in helping to organize troops should 
apply at once to local or national Scout Headquarters. 

Useful books are: ‘Scout Handbook for Boys’, pub¬ 
lished by the Editorial Board of the National Council; ‘Two 


B R A I N | 

Little Savages’, by Ernest Thompson Seton; ‘The Boy 
Problem’, by W. B. Forbush; ‘First Aid to the Injured’, 
edited by the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A.; 
‘Camping and Woodcraft’, by Horace Kephart; ‘Emergen¬ 
cies’, by C. V. Gulick; ‘The Boy Pioneers’, by Dan C. 
Beard; ‘The Handbook for Scout Masters’, published by 
the Editorial Board of the Boy Scouts of America; ‘The Com¬ 
ing Generation’, by W. B. Forbush; ‘Boy Training’, by John L. 
Alexander; ‘Boy Life and Self Government’, by George W. 
Fiske. For full bibliography on scout work and the different 
phases of scouting see the appendix of the different publica¬ 
tions and handbooks of the Boy Scouts of America. 

BRAH'MA. An Indian deity of the ancient Hindu 
religion. Brahma is thought of as the creator of the 
world and the first member of the Hindu Trinity, 
which includes Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the 
destroyer and reproducer. In art he is represented 
with four heads and as many arms. In the Rig-Veda, 
one of the great religious books of the Hindus, dating 
from more than 1,000 years before Christ, the name 
Brahma represents the essence of the universe, from 
which all created things are evolved and into which 
they return. The term Brahman still denotes a mem¬ 
ber of the sacred priestly caste among the Hindus. 
(See Hinduism; India.) 



The EVERLASTING WONDER 0/YOUR BRAIN 


-DRAIN. Themost 
baffling mystery of 
the human brain is how 
it acts; the next most 
baffling is its history. 

In the development of life the first impression of 
the outer world came, naturally, to the outer cells 
of living creatures, and we find that the entire nervous 
system of the animal world has developed from these 
outward cells. At a very early stage in the history 
of a human being a portion of the outer skin turns in¬ 
ward, becomes inclosed in what is to be the strongest 
part of the body, and develops into the nervous sys¬ 
tem, the seat of intelligence. 

And this nervous system, which man shares with 
his rivals in the animal kingdom, has developed in man 
in such a way that we have now two nervous systems 
combined—the old one, which may almost be said to 
have remained to look after the body, and a new one, 
which chiefly is the mechanism of the mind. 

When the backbone was built up by the animal 
world the nerve cell came in too; it was almost, we 
may say, as if life knew what was coming with the 
backbone. The old system led to the old animal 
brain, over which the new brain has crept; and the 
new brain of man, creeping higher and higher above 
the old, is the newest and most astonishing creation 
known to us. 

Every Man’s Recording Angel 

Inside the long tube in what we call the backbone, 
floating in a fluid so that knocks do not harm it, is a 
band of 18 inches of soft material, weighing an ounce 
or two, and measuring less than an inch across. It is 


the spinal cord, with 
thousands of millions of 
threads running through 
it up to where the long 
tube opens out and be¬ 
comes the cranium. In this cavity of the skull, floating 
in water to protect itself from shock, lies the wonder 
of the age—every man’s book of his own life, every 
man’s library of thought, every man’s diary of his 
acts for every hour he has lived! Here, in this box 
as strong as a rock, lives the recording angel of 
every man, writing his life down in indelible charac¬ 
ters, missing nothing, forgetting nothing, recording 
forever, for us or against us, the things of our lives 
that we and God alone can know. 

Not many ounces the brain weighs, and its gray 
matter is only a fraction of the whole—folded over 
and over to give it a larger surface, packed with at 
least 3,000,000,000 cells, which send out their fibers, 
like telephone wires, to be in instant touch with any 
part of your body. Like fine thread, less than a 
thousandth-part of an inch thick, these fibers, ru nni ng 
to the brain from the spinal cord, have three separate 
parts—outer sheaths for protection; inner sheaths 
made of a fine white substance; and, inside these, 
wires of thought and action along which the physical 
basis of every thought that comes into your head, of 
every impulse of love and hate, of every yearning for 
noble or ignoble things, of every act that you perform 
has passed, is passing, and will pass as long as your 
soul rests in its present home. 

Lord Tennyson saw all the mystery of God and man 
in a flower in a crannied wall,” but how immeasur- 


For any subject not found in it. alphabetical place see information 

486 


A/TAN'S Brain, with its greater weight and more deli- 
* ** cate organization , raises him above the beasts and 
gives him mastery over the world. The wonders of its 
structure and its work are described in this article. 







THE CONTROL STATION OF YOUR BODY 



‘mtenderxts of Motive Power 


ups tdk&ue 


Manger of 
Speech^ 


BRAIN HEAOQUARTEI 

(in Cerebrum) 


Air tubes to' r 
Aeratinb Roorry 


Imaeine your brain as the executive branch of a big business. It is divided, as you see here into many departments, seated at 
t“e big desk in the headquarters office is the General Manager—your Conscious Self-with telephone lines running to all depart¬ 
ments Around you are your chief assistants—the Superintendents of Incoming Messages, such as Vision, Taste, Smell, Hearing, 
Tnd Fueling (the last two hidden behind the central offices). Nearby also are the Superintendents of Outgoing Messages, which 
Control Speech Ld the movement of Arms, Legs, and all other parts of the body. Of course, only the most important messages 
evefrL^h your office Routine tasks, such as running the heart, lungs, and stomach, or supervising the minor details of muscular 
work are carried on by the Managers of Automatic Actions in the Medulla Oblongata and the Manager of Reflex Actions in the 
rcrphfllum All other departments form what the scientists call the Cerebrum. „ 

Suppose that you are walking absent-mindedly on the street, and meet your friend Johnny Jones. He calls your name, you stop, 
f fl v“Hullo*> Ind shake hands. It all seems very simple, but let’s see what happened during that time in your brain. The instant 
Tnhnnv Tones called your name, your Hearing Manager reported the sound, and your Camera Man flashed a picture of him to the 
camera room ‘‘Watch out!» came signa^to yo^r ^mstant^ott 

^iiy on'sr 












contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his 


487 


work 




































ably beyond all that is the mystery of these few grains 
of gray matter that have changed the world! These 
cells that know everything—how do they know? 
These threads that carry to the brain a child’s joy in 
a babbling brook, a soldier’s thrill in the hour of 
victory, a murderer’s dread purpose when the sun 
has gone down—how do they work? This brain, that 
gives us all we know of light and sound, yet lives in 
darkness and silence forever—what unknown power 
lies hidden here to appal the men who try to under¬ 
stand it? 

The sound of a voice does not reach your brain, yet 
the brain interprets my words for you, and reproduces 
for you every sound. We see with the mind, as a 
great artist sees his pictures still if he goes blind. We 
hear with the mind, as Beethoven heard his sym¬ 
phonies when he was deaf. The memory of the vision, 
the memory of the sound, are there, and come back 
when we will. No ray of light ever reached your 
brain, yet the brain is provided with an agent to look 
out upon the world and tell you what is there. Like 
Noah’s dove, the nerve of vision comes out of darkness 
to peep through the window of your house and report 
to the brain what it sees. It waits behind the win¬ 
dow until light has pierced the retina and upon it has 
photographed the world. Every great and little thing 
you see about you light impresses on the million fibers 
of the optic nerve, which carry information concerning 
the picture to the interpreter who has never been to 
the window in his life, and sits directing human vision 
from a throne of darkness. 

The Mystery of the “Gray Matter” 

In this gray matter lies the mysterious power of 
man to rule the world; this it is that Nature has given 
to man in larger amount than to any other animal. 
It is “the difference that makes the difference” be¬ 
tween ourselves and all other forms of life upon the 
earth. Yet this unspeakable gif t to man is not merely 
the highest achievement of creation; its greatest won¬ 
der is that it is creative in itself. It can be trained 
and developed; it can be guided along wise or foolish 
ways; and as far as we know, there is no limit to its 
power. It was said of Oliver Goldsmith that he 
“wrote like an angel and talked like Poor Poll”; and 
the marvel of the brain is that its power lies in selected 
areas, some of which may be rich and some poor, some 
vigorous and some feeble, so that a man actually may 
be clever in some things and dull in other ways. It 
is for us to see that this solemn seat of power, this un¬ 
fathomable source of energy, this instrument with 
potentiality beyond our dreams, is rightly trained and 
guided. 

It is not for nothing that there has run through all 
the ages the great purpose which fulfills itself in the 
human mind. Fire-mist to earth, chaos to cosmos, a 
living cell in the sea to the animal world, the adapta¬ 
tion of the earth to human life, the dawn of conscious¬ 
ness and the human mind—these things are not an 
accident, nor are they the mere working of the laws 
of chemistry. It is not an accident that stone rises 


on stone until the Washington Monument is made; 
the things that make an airplane did not merely hap¬ 
pen to fall together. The mind of man has not yet 
fallen so low as to believe in that. In spite of over¬ 
whelming odds, the mind of man has discovered the 
history of itself and the hidden workings of the law 
of life. If we look back into the past and think of the 
great book of human knowledge that men have built 
up in these last few hundred years, we are staggered 
to think how great it really is. 

Reading the Book of the Past 

The chances against this book of knowledge were 
millions of millions to one. What evidence of the 
past is left for us to see? A few stray leaves swept 
into lakes and preserved in mud, a few flies in amber, 
a few skeletons in river-beds, a few remains of creatures 
once living in the sea. No destruction could be more 
complete than the destruction of the signs of life in 
ages past. Of the hundreds of kinds of animals and 
plants in the coal-making period, most were entirely 
blotted out; and again and again general disaster has 
thus come upon the earth. Yet somehow, in unimag¬ 
inable ways, this amazing mind of man has read the 
tale of the past and torn aside the veil, so that we 
know what happened, and how it happened, almost 
as clearly as we know the history of the airplane or 
the growth of the United States. 

There is something almost too great for words in 
the wonder of the human body, but the wonder of the 
body itself is not unmatched in the world. We can 
hardly pick a daisy, or watch a horse galloping, or 
listen to the singing of a bird, without being stirred 
by the same mystery, the same feeling half akin to 
fear, that comes as we think of the human body. 
Something of this wonder is in every flower that 
grows and in every animal that walks the earth; but 
we think of all this other wonder, of all the glory of 
the world about us, the sun by day and the stars by 
night, the majesty of the sea and the towering peaks, 
and we know that the human mind is greater than it 
all. Nothing known to man can match the wonder 
of his brain. 

From the life-cell of a bird may grow a bird, but 
the bird builds its nest and sings its song, and is gone. 
From the life-cell of a dog may grow a dog, and the 
dog may love its master and die for him, but it leaves 
no mark behind, and it never knew the history of 
itself. But the human life-cell grows into a child, 
the child is named George Washington, and lo, the 
United States has come into the world. 

Man Rules the World by His Brain 

That is the mark of man. Fearfully and wonder¬ 
fully is his body made, but in this he is not incom¬ 
parable. He has made himself erect, has come down 
from the trees and has changed his front feet into 
hands; but with even these advantages a man would 
be helpless against the beasts, if it were not for his 
brain. 

Man’s hand is beyond compare; with his thumb 
he has built up human history, and thousands of 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

488 






HOW THE ARTIST’S BRAIN PAINTS A PICTURE 



Pprhans vou have thought that the clever fingers of the painter should get the credit for a beautiful masterpiece. But here we see 
how the Picture is first painted in the brain and then transferr^ed to jh^canva^byjthat^ wen-tra^ned^servant—the hand. As the artist 


understand what ft sees. But now the mental image of that landscape is carried to the intelligence center where its colors and 
shapes its distances and perspectives, are interpreted and given a meaning. That meaning is telegraphed on to the controlling 
center of arm and hand. There the artist calls upon his experience and the memory of the rules of his art to give new shape and 
color to his picture-thought. He really paints it in his imagination, and then sends the details one by one down the nerves to his 
v hand, which puts them on the canvas. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

489 








Like a Telephone System { 


^BR AIN 

books could not hold the things he has learned from 
the sensitive touch of his finger-tips; but without his 
brain behind it, a man’s hand could never have 
fought a lion and killed it. In nothing physical but 
his brain—the organ of his mind—is man superior to 
animals. Physically many animals are more than 
his peers, but in his mind 
man is king of them all. 

Here alone he towers above 
the whole known universe. 

For all other creatures 
“Thus far and no farther” 
has been the law of life; it 
is man alone who advances. 

In other creatures the body 
is the end; in man it is 
the means. Somewhere in 
this wondrous frame of a 
human being was set a 
seed from which man has 
built up age after age of - 
glory not unworthy of the 
glory of the earth. He has 
made the earth a house 
for mankind, not less mar¬ 
velous in its way than the 
house his soul inhabits. 

Other creatures adapt themselves to the world; man 
does this too; but he does more: he adapts the 
world to himself. Other creatures are adapted to 
one or another kind of fife—to walk or fly or swim; 
a man can do all these things. Other creatures have 
advanced along a single road, and that a cul de sac; 
man is established on the open way that knows no 
end. It is with his brain that he has marched thus 
far; it is with his brain he will go farther yet. 

From now till the end of our lives we could sit and 
read of the wonder of our brain and not exhaust the 
story. If in place of this mysterious power within our 
frame we had a conscious partner all through life, 
knowing us thoroughly, intimate with all our moods, 
understanding all our needs, able to control us and 
directus, we should not be the better for it; he could 
do no more. One can truthfully say: “I am my brain.” 

Structure and Working of Our Brains 

In the brain we find the headquarters of the body, 
or the “executive offices” of the body, which direct, 
control, and supervise all of our activities, both with¬ 
in and without. It is here that information is received 
from the outside world, classified, and stored up in 
the memory. It is from this headquarters that orders 
go out, directing all of the activities of the body. 

The brain is a vast collection of nerve cells and 
their long, fine extensions known as fibers, lying 
mostly within the skull. It has been called the organ 
of thought, sensation, and conscious movement. 
Because of its extreme importance and its delicacy, 
special care has been taken to make the walls of 
the room that it occupies very hard and not easily 
injured. This room is called the cranium. 


The great difference between man and the lower 
animals lies in the greater weight and complexity of 
man’s brain. The higher we go in the scale of animal 
life, the more complex does this collection of nerve 
cells and nerve fibers become. The relative size and 
surface of the different parts change from the nearly 
smooth surface of the brains 
of the rabbit and bird, up 
to the dog, whose brain be¬ 
gins to show ridges called 
“convolutions.” In the 
human brain these convolu¬ 
tions are numerous and 
very highly marked. The 
weight of the brain does not 
necessarily mean greater 
intelligence, but the number 
and complexity of the con¬ 
volutions does do so. 

The entire nervous sys¬ 
tem-composed of the brain, 
spinal cord, and the associ¬ 
ated nerves—has been well 
compared to the complex 
telephone system. The 
brain corresponds to the 
great central exchange, in 
charge of an unseen operator, the mind. The various 
sub-stations or branch exchanges correspond to the 
groups of nerve cells or nerve centers located along 
the spinal column. The nerve fibers correspond to 
the wires—one set, known as the sensory nerve fibers, 
for “incoming messages,” and the other set, known 
as the motor nerve fibers, for “outgoing messages.” 

Why You Jump when You are Burned 
The two systems, the nervous system and the 
telephone system, work very much alike. For exam¬ 
ple, the hand comes into contact with a hot stove 
and what happens? Instantly the touch corpuscles 
(or touch cells) located in the hand start a message 
to the brain over sensory fibers. There it is received 
and another message immediately started out (over 
motor fibers) to the muscles which control the hand. 
And the hand is taken out of harm’s way—all done 
unconsciously and almost instantly. 

Where the nerve cells are grouped together in large 
numbers they show a grayish color and hence are 
called the “gray matter.” Where the fibers pre¬ 
dominate the color is white and .hence this is called 
the “white matter.” In general the nerve cells are 
distributed over the outside of the brain, forming a 
very thin layer which dips down into the convolutions 
and covers the white matter underneath. 

Let us look a bit closer at this central exchange. 
Just as in a city telephone system the downtown ex¬ 
change takes care of the downtown district only, and 
the west side exchange takes care of a west side area 
only, so in the brain certain areas must take care of 
certain things and those only. For example, in the 
“front brain” ( cerebrum) are located the areas of 

alphabetical place tee inf or motion 


CHIEF PARTS OF BRAIN 



The Cerebrum or hemispheres of the brain is the part 
which governs the intelligence. The Cerebellum or 
“little brain” seems to co-ordinate the muscular move¬ 
ments. In the Medulla Oblongata, which connects the 
brain to the spinal cord, are centered the nerves controlling 
the automatic movements, such as heart-beats, etc. 


For any subject not found in its 







Anatomy of the Brain 


T) 


B R A I 


vision, hearing, and speech, also areas for control of 
voluntary motion; while the “little brain” ( cerebellum) 
controls the coordination or working together of the 
muscles. 

Men have experimented on animals, and they have 
also taken the brains of persons who have died and 
cut them into mi¬ 
nutely thin slices 
called sections—as 
many as 2,000 sec¬ 
tions through a sin¬ 
gle brain. They 
have mounted 
these sections on 
glass slides, and 
have studied them 
carefully under the 
microscope. Al¬ 
most every single 
cell which goes to 
make up this won¬ 
derful switchboard 
has thus been ex¬ 
amined under the 
microscope again 
and again. It has 
been studied and 
watched singly and 
in its relation to its 
neighbor, and in 
this way a great 
deal has been 
learned about the 
brain. Much also 
has been learned by 
studying the brains 
of people who have 
died from brain diseases and by studying the brains 
of animals. 

Parts of the Brain 

In men the average weight of the brain is 48 ounces, 
and in women about 43 ounces. It is made up of two 
main parts. (1) The “front brain,” or brain proper, 
is called the cerebrum. It is divided into right and 
left portions (called “hemispheres”) by a deep length¬ 
wise fissure or groove. These two hemispheres are 
joined near the middle by a broad band of white or 
nerve fiber tissue. The activities of the mind— 
thought and reason, memory and will, sensation or 
feeling—are located in this portion of the brain. A 
frog which has lost this part of its brain can still 
perform a large number of mechanical acts in response 
to stimuli, —can jump, swum, croak, guide itself by 
sight, and do almost everything a normal frog would 
do, except the spontaneous acts guided by what we 
should call an idea. In the human brain certain 
functions—speech, movements of leg, arm, head, 
face, etc.—have been accurately located; but we are 
still far from sure as to just what areas are given over 
to other activities. (2) The “little brain,” or cere¬ 


bellum, is situated behind and almost beneath the 
cerebrum; indeed it is partially overlapped by it. 
The functions of the cerebellum are not fully known, 
but it is certain that it is connected with walking and 
the act of balancing and other adaptations of the 
body to space relatioas. (3) In addition there are 

various other parts 
of the brain which 
have been separate¬ 
ly named—such as 
the “bridge,” or 
pons; the medulla 
oblongata, or “long 
marrow,” which is 
an extension of the 
spinal cord; and the 
pituitary body, a 
small rounded gland 
near the center on 
the under side of the 
brain ( see Gland). 

It is curious to 
find that the nerve 
fibers leading from 
the hemispheres 
cross at the base of 
the brain, so that 
it is the left hemi¬ 
sphere which con¬ 
trols the right half 
of the body, and 
vice versa. Most 
people are “left- 
brained,” that is, 
all delicate opera¬ 
tions requiring skill 
of the hand are di¬ 
rected by the left brain; hence they are right-handed. 
“Left-handedness” exists where this arrangement is 
reversed and the right hemisphere of the brain is the 
more highly developed. 

We must also note that the brain is not a solid mass 
as we often think of it, for there are cavities in the 
hemispheres—known as “ventricles”—which are a 
continuation of the central cavity of the spinal cord. 
Like the latter they are filled with a fluid called the 
“cerebro-spinal fluid.” 

The more we study this brain of ours, the more we realize 
what a wonderful piece of machinery it is; how delicate the 
whole of it is, and how absolutely interdependent the parts 
are! Any injury to the brain, such as may be caused by an 
accident or disease, will interfere with the physical and 
mental activities of the patient, according to the part of 
the brain affected. Apoplexy or *“shock” is due to the 
breaking of a blood-vessel in the brain and comes on unex¬ 
pectedly. The outflowing blood causes pressure on par¬ 
ticular parts, which produces a heavy stupor. This usually 
passes off, but there are permanent defects from such an 
injury. One result may be paralysis, or the loss of the power 
of movement, in whole or in part, which may also be caused 
by other injuries to the brain. Usually the paralysis is on 
one side only, and it is known that injury to one side of the 
brain causes paralysis on the opposite side of the body, 


THE INSIDE OF THE BRAIN 



In this cross-section of the head we see, first, the scalp, then the thick bone of 
the skull which protects the delicate brain cells, and, inside the skull-case, the 
complicated “convolutions” or folds of the brain itself. . The “gray matter” 
and the white fiber masses are indicated by the dark and light shading. Notice 
how the nerve strands from the right and left hemispheres cross at the bottom 
of the brain. This explains why an injury to the right side of the brain may 
paralyze the left side of the body, and vise versa. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

491 


















TRAIN 


| B R 


A I N 


BRAKES 


HOW A BLAST OF AIR STOPS A 



It would be impossible to operate rapidly all the air-brakes in 
& long train, if the air each time had to come all the way from the 
engine, so each car is provided with its own compressed air 
tank, which is kept constantly filled. Here we see the ingenious 
principle upon which the system depends. As shown here, the 
train is running free and the brake is off, the air pressure in both 
tanks is the same, for they are connected to each other through 
Valve C on the control cylinder. But as soon as the air control 
lever is pushed over. Valve B cuts off the air compressor tank 
aa ". allows the air in the exhaust pipe and on the right-hand side 

side of the control piston forces thfs^isto'n to^he right, cloling^alve^C 0 * ^hi^pu^ls'the^hift’n^t Valve C *^ h f pr ® ssure oa the left 
and allows the air from the auxiliary supply tank tirun into the brake cvlinde^nH h pistoaac ^ Valve A, closes Valve D, 

to a stop. With this method of applyingthe brakes by letting air out from the connecting p°p“s a ta/oranv‘natt ota^ 

breaks away from the engine is at once brought to a hauf y part ° f 3 tram which 


owing to the crossing of the fiber tracts. Aphasia is the 
loss of the power of speech, or the power to understand what 
is. said, and amnesia is the loss of memory. These mental 
disorders may appear as a result of disease m or injury to 
the corresponding part of the brain, in persons who other¬ 
wise appear perfectly well. Insanity too is now known to 
be a disease of the brain, and such patients are now placed 
in hospitals for observation and care in order that physicians 
may find out how to cure their sick brains. 

Brakes. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railway mag¬ 
nate, fixed a quizzical gaze on George Westinghouse, 
the inventor. 

“Do you mean to tell me,” said he, “that you can 
stop a railroad train by wind?” 

“Well,” replied Westinghouse, “since air is wind, 
yes!” 

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Vanderbilt. “I have no 
time to waste on such a fool idea!” 

And the inventor, discouraged but determined, was 
obliged to look elsewhere for aid. Eventually he 
found it. Other men of wealth, among whom were 
Andrew Carnegie, Ralph Bagley, and Robert Pit¬ 
cairn, recognized the merit of his invention and 
equipped a train according to his plans. As the old- 
fashioned train rattled over the rails near Pittsburgh, 
the first trial of the air-brake took place in 1868. 


The test was a complete success. Westinghouse 
had made good his boast that with this automatic 
air-brake he could stop a train in its own length— 
stop it almost as abruptly as the sea-gull, swooping 
down from on high, checks its descent with tail and 
wings and settles gently on the water. 

Almost immediately the Westinghouse brake re¬ 
placed the old hand-brakes on all fast passenger 
trains in this country and the rest of the world. Later 
it w^as applied to freight trains and trolley cars, so 
that today the once familiar picture of the brakeman 
struggling with frantic vigor at wheels and levers is 
seen no more, except on a few unimportant lines which 
still operate with their old equipment. 

Without the air-brake, the terrific speeds of modern 
trains would be impossible. Even with the li<dit 
trains and low speeds of the early days many acci¬ 
dents were caused by the ineffectiveness of the hand¬ 
brakes. It was largely the sight of such an accident 
that set Westinghouse experimenting to devise a 
brake which could be applied effectively and at about 
the same instant to every car in a train. 

He succeeded so w’ell that the action of his air¬ 
brake takes place at the last car of a 50-car train in 


For any subject 


not found in its alphabetical 
492 


place see i nf or nt a , 






















































214 seconds after application at the engine. The 

estinghouse brake is operated by a steam-driven air 
pump on the engine, which compresses air into a res¬ 
ervoir. A system of pipes and couplings distributes 
the compressed air to the brake cylinders placed 
under each car. 

And thus today, as one writer says, “while the 
locomotive thunders along the steel highway at great 
speed over chasms spanned by traceries of steel and 
down steep mountain grades, the engineer sits calm 
and steadfast, secure in the knowledge that locomo¬ 
tive and train are entirely in hand, since a turn of a 
lever will cause every wheel to be gripped by viselike 
brakeshoes applied by the greatest life-saver of mod¬ 
ern times, the Westinghouse automatic air-brake.” 

De^ ices for checking speed have been used ever since 
men first invented wheeled vehicles. They all depend on 
friction.. The simplest and probably the most primitive 
method is to lock one or more wheels by a chain fastened 
to the axle, when going down hill. The next step is to 


attach shoes” of wood or metal so that they can be applied 
to the rim of the wheel by pressure of the foot on a lever. 
Then comes the invention of more effective means of apply¬ 
ing these brakes—by the use of springs, hydraulic pressure, 
electro-magnetism, compressed air, or vacuum. In most 
modern elevators in buildings the brakes are operated by 
powerful springs, which press metal shoes against a brake 
pulley at the top of the elevator shaft. Most automobiles 
are equipped with two sets of exceedingly powerful brakes. 
The service or foot brakes are usually metal shoes which 
operate by pressing against the inside of a drum attached 
to the driving wheels, while the emergency brakes are steel 
bands which are clamped tight around the outside of the 
drum. 

One of the most ingenious brakes is the “coaster-brake” 
for bicycles, which enables the rider to stop by back-pedaling. 
Some bicycles, however, are equipped with brakes which 
work on the rims of the wheels and are operated by levers 
attached to the handlebars. 

Brass. An alloy of copper and zinc much used 
in the arts because of its handsome yellow color and 
the ease with which it can be worked. (See Alloys; 
Copper.) 


The MYSTERIOUS 

TDRAZIL, United States 
of. The enormous re¬ 
public of Brazil, which 
occupies more than half 
of all South America, is a 
fascinating region to the 
explorer because of the 
vast proportion of its 
territory which has never 
been trodden by civilized 
man. Along the low¬ 
lands of the mighty Amazon, which with its 200 
tributaries forms the world’s largest river system, 
stretches the greatest continuous forest of the two 
hemispheres (see Amazon River). This vast basin, 
comprising more than one-half of the area of the 
republic, is flooded every year throughout much of 
its extent, and hence is covered with a vegetation 
more luxuriant than is found in any other part of 
the world. 

The Great Forest and Its Zoo 

The giant trees rise from impenetrable thickets of 
underbrush, and their branches are entwined and 
festooned with great creepers and vines, themselves 
as big as trees. Innumerable species of bright- 
plumaged birds fill the jungle with their harsh strident 
cries. Huge alligators, boa-constrictors, anacondas, 
and rattlesnakes infest it; and it is the home of 
monstrous spiders large enough to prey on birds; of 
brilliantly colored butterflies, some of them nine 
inches from wing-tip to wing-tip; of immense numbers 
of monkeys, of savage pumas and jaguars, and of such 
strange beasts as the armadillo, sloth, peccary (or 
wild pig), tapir, and ant-eater. 

This abode of mystery, the largest unexplored 
tract in the Western Hemisphere, every year lures 
bold adventurous spirits, but few have penetrated 


AMAZON 

far and many have died 
in the attempt. Trails 
cut painfully and labor¬ 
iously are swallowed up 
within 12 months by 
the ocean of vegetation 
so that hardly a trace 
remains. 

In many other re¬ 
spects Brazil is unique 
among the countries of 
the world. The third largest political division 
of the American continent, with an area of about 
3,292,000 square miles—nearly as large as all Europe 
and larger than the United States if we exclude 
Alaska—Brazil has an estimated population of 
about 27,000,000, or only a little more than the 
states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and 
Colorado. Its four largest states have an average 
population of only one person to every two square 
miles, against an average of 30 to the square mile in 
the United States. The bulk of this scanty popula¬ 
tion clings to the narrow strip of coast along the 
Atlantic or to the banks of the Amazon and its 
tributaries. 

A Great Treasure-House Still Unopened 

“No great country in the world owned by a Euro¬ 
pean race possesses so large a proportion of land 
available for the support of human life and productive 
industry,” says Lord B^ce in his ‘South America’; 
yet the immense resources of Brazil have hardly been 
touched. With only a small fraction of its fertile 
land under cultivation, Brazil today produces two- 
thirds of the world’s supply of coffee (see Coffee) and 
three-fifths of the world’s rubber (see Rubber). The 
Amazon forests abound in mahogany, rosewood, 
ebony, and cacao trees, and others which yield valu- 


LAND of the 

Glimpses into the World's Treasure-House 
of Coffee and Rubber 

Extent .—East to west, about 2,700 miles; north to south, 2,600 miles; 
area, about 3,292,000 square miles (larger than the United States, 
excluding Alaska). Population estimated at from 24,000,000 to 
27,000,000. 

Chie/ Rivers .—Amazon River, with its great tributaries, the Japura, 
Rio Negro, Jurua, Purus, Madeira, Tapajos, Xingu, and Tocantins; 
Araguaya, Paraguay, Sao Francisco, Parana, and Uruguay. (A 
tributary oi tne Madeira is called Roosevelt River in honor of 
ex-President Roosevelt, who explored it in 1913.) 

Chief Products. —Coffee, rubber, sugar, hides, yeroa mate, cacao, 
tobacco, cotton, frozen meats, cotton goods. 

Chief Cities .—Rio de Janeiro (capital, population about 1,500,000), 
Sao Paulo (450,000), Bahia (350,000), Pernambuco (250,000). 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

493 








BRAZIL 


Its Rivers and Railways 




able drugs and nuts. Over the vast grasslands of 
central and southern Brazil range enormous herds of 
cattle, almost half as many as in the whole of the 
United States; yet the packing industry is only in 
its infancy. The agricultural possibilities of the 
country are immense. The climate and soil are un¬ 
surpassed for growing cereals, fruits, sugar, cotton, 
flax, and dozens of other crops. In minerals, Brazil 
is probably the world’s greatest untapped storehouse. 
Brazil is believed to have the richest and greatest 
iron deposits in the world; its diamonds are of finer 
grade than those of South Africa, and it has other 
precious stones in abundance; more than $500,000,000 


Let us look more closely at the shape and structure 
of this wonderland. Brazil has a coastline of 5,000 
miles fronting the Atlantic Ocean on its east and 
northeast boundaries. The land frontier touches 
that of every other South American republic except 
Chile. In physical formation it consists of two 
sharply contrasted divisions: a table-land of rolling 
plains and mountains in the east and south, and the 
great forest land of the Amazon in the north and 
west. The extensive coast lands are made up of sand 
and rock washed down from the high seaboard ranges, 
covered in many places with dense tropical growths. 

For the greater part of the country, the rivers are 


SOUTH 


the only avenues 

AMERICA’S LARGEST COUNTRY 


A TL ANTIC 


O 


Mouths of the 
R. 


C E A N 

Equator 


> 
w O 
w 

' M 

o 

X 

* 


JANEIRO 


Tropic _ of 


pncorn 


Act 


Here you see how the Amazon collects its waters from the vast sweep of encircling mountains and hills, 
and after flowing through the great forests of northern Brazil, pours into the Atlantic Ocean a greater 
volume of flow than any other river in the world. The central regions of Brazil are among the wildest and 
least explored in the world, but boundless wealth there awaits development. 

worth of gold has already been mined; and the im¬ 
mense deposits of talc, silver, platinum, lead, copper, 
manganese, mercury, coal, graphite, and rare marbles 
have scarcely been touched. The eyes of the world 
are turning longingly to these various sources of 
wealth, which only await European and American 
capital for their development. 


of communication. 
Most of the natives 
live in tiny settle¬ 
ments along their 
banks in houses set 
high on piles to 
avoid the floods. 
The Amazon in the 
north, with its 100 
navigable tributa¬ 
ries, the Tocantins 
and Sao Francisco 
in the central por¬ 
tion, and the Para¬ 
guay, Uruguay, and 
Parana in the south, 
furnish more than 
10,000 miles of 
waterways deep 
enough for large 
steamers, and 20,- 
000 miles more open 
to boats of light 
draft. Several 
steamship compa¬ 
nies maintain regu¬ 
lar service between 
important points. 
Along the seaboard 
and connecting with 
the larger cities in- 
land are nearly 
20,000 miles of rail¬ 
way. 

While Brazil lies 
almost entirely in 
the tropics and the 
climate of the great¬ 
er part is character¬ 
istically tropical, with only five or ten degrees’ differ¬ 
ence between the seasons, there are temperate regions 
in the mountains and in the southern portions. Along 
the Amazon the heat is tempered by the great expanse 
of water, by the forests, and by the trade-wind which 
blows up the river almost constantly. But the exces¬ 
sive rainfall and the constant heat breed fevers which 


SCALE OF MILES 


For any ,abject not found in it, alphabet! cal place see information 

494 














The Mixed Population 


BRAZIL 


SHIPPING PORT FOR THE COFFEE BEAN 



The city of Santos, on the coast of Southern Brazil, is the most important coSee shipping center in the world. Here are loaded 
the ships that carry the great Brazilian coffee crop to Europe and to North America. Its harbor, which you see in the distance, is a 
fine one, protected by surrounding hills. Santos is a typical South American city, with wide pleasant streets, low white houses, and 

a general atmosphere of busy prosperity. 


are dangerous to white men and thus retard develop¬ 
ment of the natural resources. 

What Brazil Sells to the Rest of the World 
The chief exports, in addition to coffee and rubber, 
are sugar, cacao beans, hides, tobacco, cotton, beans, 
frozen meats, and manganese. Nearly one-half of 
these go to the United States. More than two-thirds 
of all the coffee consumed in the world is produced 
by Brazil, and by what is known as a “valorization” 
plan the Brazilian government aids the growers and 
regulates exports so as to keep up prices. Brazil also 
produces large quantities of yerba mate or “Brazil 
tea”—the dried leaves of the ilex tree—which is 
mostly exported to other South American countries. 
The beverage made by steeping these leaves is said 
to taste like a weak mixture of turpentine and water, 
but it is very popular with the natives. 

Manufacturing has been slow in developing, but 
the textile and meat-packing industries have become 
of increasing importance in late years. Machinery 
and most of the luxuries of life are imported from 
Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. 

A Strange Mixture of Races 
The population of Brazil is the most mixed on the 
continent. Of its estimated 27,000,000, the whites 
probably do not number more than 9,000,000 even 
with the steady flow of European immigration—chief¬ 
ly from the mother country Portugal, and latterly 
from Italy, Spain, and Germany. The remaining 


two-thirds consist of negroes originally imported as 
plantation slaves, but freed by the government in 
1888, native Indians, and mixed breeds. Brazil is the 
only South American republic in which negro blood is 
an important element in the racial mixture. 

The language of Brazil, unlike that of the parts of 
the continent colonized by Spain, is Portuguese. The 
standard of literacy is very low, and there is a crying 
need for education. Primary education is free, but it 
is not compulsory. In Rio de Janeiro there are high 
schools and colleges, and a naval academy, for Brazil 
has an important navy of modern ships. 

Under a constitution adopted in 1891, Brazil is a federal 
republic of 20 states and one federal district, with a govern¬ 
ment much less centralized than that of the United States. 
Its capital is Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of 
South America (see Rio de Janeiro). Sao Paulo, the world’s 
greatest coffee market, lies in the highlands of the coast about 
40 miles from the sea. Its elevation gives it a delightful 
climate. A network of short railroads brings the coffee 
from the great plantations which cover the state of Sao 
Paulo, and another line carries it to the seaport of Santos, 
one of the busiest ports of the continent, which ships about 
15,000,000 bags of coffee every year. Bahia (Sao Salvador), 
the old capital of Brazil, is also an important shipping center 
for coffee, cacao, and cotton. This city is the home of the 
seedless orange, and it was from there that the United 
States Agricultural Department first obtained trees of this 
variety. Huge elevators connect the commercial part of 
the city about the harbor with the picturesque residential 
section on the cliffs high above. Pernambuco (Recife) is 
one of the chief sugar centers and an important port. Para 
(Belem) at the mouth of the Amazon is the great rubber 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

495 








1 B R A Z I~ 

port. Ocean steamers travel from Para nearly 1,000 miles 
up the Amazon to Manaos, which has become a thriving 
modern city and shipping port for forest products. 

Brazil was discovered in 1500 by a companion of Colum¬ 
bus, the Spanish explorer Pinzon. The same year a Portu¬ 
guese commander, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, visited the land 
and took possession of it in the name of his sovereign. 
Portuguese colonies sprang up, but Portugal had to fight for 
the land, expelling some French settlers in 1015 and Dutch 
in 1661. For 60 years, from 1580 to 1640, while Portugal 
was united with Spain, Brazil received little attention. 
When the French in 1808 invaded Portugal, the royal family 
took refuge in Brazil, and during the 14 years of exile did 
much for the country. When King John returned to 
Lisbon, the eldest son Dom Pedro was left as prince regent. 


BREAD AND BAKING 


The following year, 1822, yielding to a revolutionary move¬ 
ment, Dom Pedro declared Brazil independent and was 
crowned emperor. After a strenuous reign he abdicated 
in 1831 to a regency, to be succeeded by his son Dom Pedro 
II who ruled until 1889. In that year a bloodless revolution 
finally made the country a republic. From 1865 to 1870 
Brazil in alliance with Argentina and Uruguay waged a 
costly but victorious war with Paraguay. 

Brazil severed relations with Germany on April 11, 1917, 
after the torpedoing by the Germans of the Brazilian steamer 
Parana. Other sinkings of Brazilian vessels by Germany 
inflamed public opinion until finally a state of war was pro¬ 
claimed. The powerful Brazilian navy took up the patrol 
of the South Atlantic, thus releasing many French and 
British warships for other activities. 


BREAD AND BAKING 


!The DAILY BREAD of ALL THE WORLD 

The Long and Ancient Story of the Bread Loaf, which is also the Story of the 
Farmer and His Plow, the Miller, the Baker, and the Boy with the 
Delivery Wagon—Some Quaint Fashions in Bread 


B READ AND BAKING. Bread is rightly called the 
“staff of life” of the white race, the world over for it 
is and always has been their most important food. At 
every meal w r e want bread, 
and if w r e do not have it, 
no matter what else there 
is, our meal is incomplete. 

Did you ever stop to think 
of the immense quantity 
of bread that is used every 
day in this country, and 
of the millions of people 
who are needed to grow 
the grain, grind the flour, 
make the flour into bread, 
and bring it to our table? 

Every person in theUnited 
States, it is estimated, 
eats a barrel of flour a 
year. Imagine what a 
mountain this would 
make! If the barrels were 
placed end to end they 
would go around the 
earth three times at the 
equator; and if they w T ere 
piled one on top of another 
they would reach a quarter 
of the way to the moon! 

And it takes five bushels 
of grain to make a barrel 
of flour. An acre of 
ground yields on the aver¬ 
age less than 20 bushels 
of w T heat—wdiich is the 
grain from which most of 
our flour is made—so you can readily figure out what 
an immense area must be planted to wheat to supply 
the needs of the United States alone. Consider how 
much work the farmer expends in growing this grain; 
think of the network of railways all over the country 


that bring it to the terminal elevators; think of the 
more than 10,000 great mills that grind it into flour, 
and the thousands and thousands of bakeries that 

bake the bread; and you 
will see that the story of 
bread is one of the great¬ 
est and most interesting 
ones in the w r orld. 

Bread has meant a great 
many things since the 
world began, but it has al¬ 
ways been a cooked mix- 
ture of some kind of 
ground grains and water. 
Far back in the Stone 
Age, the earliest age of 
man that we know any¬ 
thing about, people used 
to make bread. We know 
this because hard little 
burned cakes have been 
found in their caves, with 
crude implements for 
crushing grain. These 
cakes were made of grain, 
usually wheat, slightly 
crushed and mixed with 
water. They were spread 
on a hot stone with hot 
ashes piled on top to cook 
them. The result was 
little hard cakes gritty 
with ashes, and not much 
like the crusty brown 
loaves of bread, soft and 
white within, that we 
have today. The people who lived in Egypt 5,000 
years ago knew how to bake bread from white flour. 
They made little rolls about the shape of our muffins, 
and in Greece and in Rome we know there were 
public bakeries at a very early date. 


HERE IS WHERE THE BAKER'S BREAD STARTS 



This machine turns the flour, water, and other ingredients into 
dough. The funnel at the top drops the materials into the mixer 
below, where clean steel arms give them a more thorough 
working than could any human hands. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

496 















[ Kneading by Machinery 



BREAD AND BAKING 



Following the rule of large bakeries that no hands shall ever touch the material, the dough is worked entirely by machines. The 
picture above shows two of the ingenious devices employed. Into the two reservoirs on the ceiling dough is dropped from the floor 


above. 


v„„ ... , . .- -.-.— t--.-' — -—- — • ceiling dough is dropped from the floor 

You see that wheel with a chain hanging to it beneath the nearest reservoir? That wheel operates a sliding knife, which 
cuts ott portions of the dough and drops them into the hopper beneath. These portions are cut into smaller “loaf-size” lumps, bv 
the machine at the bottom. The lumps then pass to the “umbrella machine ,, and up the chute which curves over its surface Bv 

revolving against the pieces, the “umbrella” turns them into balls. 



The balls turned out by the “umbrella machine” drop into the buckets inside this glass-inclosed “proofer.” The buckets are 
attached to an endless chain, which carries them slowly through the proofer. Heat and moisture conditions are kept just right 
within the proofer, and when the lumps come out the dough has “raised” for the last time. It is delivered to a molding machine 

which shapes the loaves and delivers them to the ovens. 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

497 






























BREAD AND BAKING 


1 \ The Marvels of a Great Bakery [ 


All the various kinds of bread that people have 
eaten and eat today belong to one or the other of two 
principal types —leavened or unleavened. Leavened 
bread means raised bread—bread that contains yeast 
or some other substance to make the loaf light and 
porous (see Yeast). Unleavened bread does not con¬ 
tain this leavening agent, and as a result is dry and 
hard throughout. Certain forms of “water crackers” 
and “hardtack” are examples of unleavened breads. 
Before man learned to make yeast, a portion of the 
uncooked dough was left from each baking and 
allowed to sour. This sour dough mixed with the 
fresh dough causes the whole to ferment; gas is 
formed and the bread is raised or leavened. This 
process is still used in far outlying districts where it 
is not possible to obtain yeast. 

Wheat and rye flours make the bulk of the world’s 
bread, though barley, corn, oats, rice, and potato flour 
are also used, either single or in combination. Wheat 
and rye breads are superior to all others in lightness 
and porosity, because the gluten they contain makes 


practice in the Middle Ages, before stores were in¬ 
vented, by which a brick oven was erected in every 
village and a fee collected by the feudal lord for its 
use. Even with the modern bakery close at hand, 
however, there are many families that do their own 
baking because they prefer the taste of “the bread 
that mother makes” and believe it to be more nour¬ 
ishing than bakers’ bread. 

A Visit to a Great City Bakery 
In the big bakeries it is most interesting to watch 
the flour being made into fragrant loaves of bread. 
Everything about these big modern factories is 
scrupulously clean and sunlight floods the rooms all 
day long. From the time the flour is prepared for 
mixing until the loaves are baked, the work is all done 
by machinery. First, the sacks and barrels of flour 
are placed on an electrically operated elevator and 
taken to the top floor, where the flour rooms are. 
Here the flour is carefully tested, and various grades 
are mixed until the special blend the baker uses is 
obtained. The flour is then sifted thoroughly and 
put into big storage bins, ready 
for use. Just below these bins are 
the weighing hoppers. When 
flour is wanted, the scales are set 
and the flour comes down into the 
hopper until the required amount 
has been weighed, when the sup¬ 
ply automatically stops. Pure 
water stored in big tanks, yeast, 
salt, sugar, and malt extract are 
added in exact proportions. The 
mixing is done in machines called 
“dough mixers,” which hold half 
a ton of dough each. Steel arms, 
clean and shining, work back and 
forth, and mix the dough more » 
thoroughly than could be done in 
any other way. 

How the Bakers “Prove” the 
Bread 

The dough is next emptied into 
large steel troughs on wheels and 
taken to a room where the tem¬ 
perature is just right for the bread 
to rise, or, as the bakers say, 
“prove.” The bread is left here 
for several hours and watched 
carefully. When it has risen to 
the proper point it goes to the 
automatic dividing machines, 
which weigh out the exact amount needed for each 
loaf, cut it neatly off, and pass it to the rounding 
machines. After the dough has been made into balls, 
it is left to rise a second time, in what is known as 
an “automatic proofer.” For several minutes it 
rides back and forth in the carefully maintained 
temperature of the dough room, and is then formed 
by the “molding machine” into loaves to fit the pans. 

It is then trundled away to a room where the tem- 


BAKED AT LAST AND READY FOR WRAPPING 



The machinery at the right of this great oven turns the baked loaves out of their pans, 
and sends the pans back along the upper trough to the “panning machine” for further 
use in baking. Meanwhile the loaves are turned into the lower conveyor at the right. 
This carries them to the wrapping machine, from which they are loaded into wagons. 
The ovens themselves are wonderfully adapted to their work. They can be brilliantly 
lighted inside at any time, and thus the bakers can watch the bread throughout the 

baking process. 

the dough sticky and elastic, thus retaining more of 
the gas generated by the leavening agent. Bread 
made from other flours may be made lighter by 
mixing in a small proportion of wheat flour. 

People who live in the country and very small 
towns usually bake their own bread, but in the larger 
towns most people get their bread from bakeries 
where thousands of loaves are baked. This is the 
universal custom in Europe, where it dates from the 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

498 








BREAD AND BAKING 


j The Breads of Different Nations 




T | ij fi i - 'jf 'if jf~ lj: \ r 4‘-~. 

I f 1 I f; i 1 i -J \ * 

1 1 i Us! S f f '1 fi f, - 




-jggglf.i 1 

in rPFT i Tir^r " 



y d i .. j 


The manufacture of soda biscuits or “crackers” follows the same general principles as bread making. The big machines shown 
above are dough-mixers. When the dough is mixed the hopper is tilted forward, and the machinery inside ejects the dough into 
the little wagons. It remains in these wagons long enough to age properly, and then is taken to the machines which stamp out 

the cracker shape and prepare it for the ovens. 


perature is kept at 100 degrees — several degrees 
hotter than the dough room — for the final rising. 

The ovens in a big bakery are built of brick and the 
walls are made very thick, so that they hold their heat 
for a long time. Even a week after the fire has been 
allowed to go out bread can still be baked in the 
ovens. Each oven holds from 300 to 350 loaves of 
bread at a time. There is a powerful electric light 
inside, so that the interior can be flooded with light 
when the baker desires to see the bread. The baking 
takes about 35 minutes. Just before the loaves are 
removed steam is turned into the oven to make the 
crust glossy. The housewife gets the same result by 
rubbing the loaf with butter or with cold water or 
milk just after it leaves the oven. 

From the oven the loaves are carried on an endless 
chain belt to the bread room. In some bakeries each 
loaf is wrapped in waxed paper by a machine into 
which the loaves go as they leave the oven. In fac¬ 
tories where the bread is not wrapped, white-gloved 
workmen pile it in clean crates for delivery. 

Although white bread in loaves is by far the biggest 
product of the bakery, many other wares are made, 
such as rye bread, graham bread, whole wheat bread, 
rolls, cakes, pies and pastries. 

Quite recently chains of bakeries of a new sort have 
arisen in our cities and towns in which bread is baked 
in gas-heated revolving ovens, which often are placed 
in the shop window in full view of the passer-by. 


When bread is made at home it is usually mixed 
and kneaded by hand, sometimes in small mixing 
machines. Any good cook-book will give a recipe as 
to the proportions of yeast, flour, salt, sugar, and 
water to use. After kneading, the dough is left to 
rise in a warm temperature, kneaded thoroughly 
again, made into loaves, left to rise again, and baked. 
Biscuits, cakes, pies, cookies, and doughnuts are all 
usually made with wheat flour, but baking powder is 
often used as the leavening agent instead of yeast 
(see Baking Powder). 

The Breads of Various Nations 
Various countries have their own characteristic 
breads. The French lead the world in the quality 
and variety of their breads. Vienna bread is made in 
long slender loaves with a heavy crust of a pleasing 
nut flavor. In Turkey bread is made by mixing a 
batter of flour and water and baking it on hot rocks. 
Swedish bread is baked in hard flat round disks. 
Corn bread is the chief article of diet in many parts 
of the southern states, and there “bread” means corn 
pone, wheat bread being called “light bread.” Bran 
bread is made by mixing a part of the outer husks of 
the wheat with the white flour. In graham and 
whole-wheat bread almost the entire wheat is ground 
in making the flour. The “Victory Bread” made 
in the United States during the World War substi¬ 
tuted a certain proportion of other cereals for wheat, 
to conserve the wheat supply. The “war breads” of 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

499 


















BREAD AND BAKING 


Story of the Soda Cracker | 


SODA BISCUITS READY FOR THE OVEN 



This complicated machine stamps the dough into the squares which are to become “crackers.” The squares are then fed out upon 
trays like the one the baker is taking up at the right, and these trays are placed in the oven. 


Germany and other European powers often con¬ 
tained so much inferior food substance as to make 
them practically indigestible. 

Of recent years crackers and biscuits—small thin 
cakes—have become enormously popular. In France 
and England all such cakes, whether sweetened or 
unsweetened, soft or hard, plain or fancy, are known 
as “biscuits.” In the United States, “cracker” us¬ 
ually means a very thin cake baked until it is dry, 
crisp, and brittle, and the term “biscuit” is applied 
by bakers to various forms of small sweetened and 
fancy cakes. Both cracker and biscuit are used, 
however, as the general term for this whole class of 
bakery products. ' 

The cracker industry has had a phenomenal growth 
in the United States since its beginning a little more 
than a century ago. Today it ranks as one of the 
best organized and largest industries in the country. 
The first crackers were large round unsweetened and 
unleavened cakes, baked until they were very hard, 
something like the water-cracker of today. Because 
they kept much better than ordinary bread, they were 
in great demand for ship supplies and were often called 
“ship bread.” At first they were made entirely by 
hand, but at the time of the great gold rush to Cali¬ 
fornia the demand for this convenient food became so 
great that machinery was invented to roll the dough 
and stamp it into cakes. During the Civil War in 
America the army and navy called for such quanti¬ 
ties of this “hardtack,” as it was called, that an 
improved oven was invented which increased the 
capacity of the bakeries by four or five times. This 
invention, which revolutionized the cracker industry 
and is used today in virtually the same form, is 
called the “mechanical reel oven.” It consists of a 
number of flat pans attached to the arms of a re¬ 


volving wheel, much like the famous Ferris wheel. 
Some of the large reel ovens today have a daily capac¬ 
ity of 50 barrels of flour. 

The other varieties of cracker had also come into 
use by the time of the Civil War—the familiar “soda 
cracker” and the soft “butter cracker.” These are 
made from leavened or raised dough, and so are 
lighter and more palatable than the old type of hard 
cracker, made from unleavened bread. Presently 
manufacturers began experimenting with various 
types of sweetened and fancy biscuits. These soon 
gained an immense sale which rapidly became one 
of the most profitable branches of the trade. 

Recently the introduction of the sealed package 
has given another great impetus to the industry. 
Crackers and biscuits are now put up in cardboard 
cartons and protected from moisture by a wrapping 
of waxed paper, thus preserving their crispness and 
freshness for a much longer time than when they were 
handled in bulk. Although these package goods 
reach the consumer in a more attractive and sanitary 
form than under the old system, he has to pay the 
price in increased cost. 

So prodigious has been the growth of this branch of 
the baking industry, in the last generation, that giant 
corporations have sprung up, with great branch bak¬ 
eries in all the leading cities of the United States. 
In these bakeries elaborate machines mix the dough, 
roll it out.into sheets and stamp these into plain or 
fancy forms which hold together until after they are 
baked. There are also ingenious contrivances for 
filling tubes of dough with fruit paste or other filling, 
for icing them, and for doing the hundreds of things 
necessary to turn out the many appetizing kinds of 
biscuit now offered us at every corner grocery store. 
(See Flour and Flour Milling; Wheat.) 


For any subject not found in it, alphabetical place see infor 

500 

















BREADFRUIT 


BREAKFAST CEREALS 


BREADFRUIT. The large globular fruit of this 
tree furnishes the chief food of the South Pacific 
islands. On various species of the tree the fruit 
ripens at different periods of the year, thus affording 
an almost constant supply. The breadfruit tree—of 
which there are 40 species found throughout the 
tropical regions of both 
hemispheres—grows 
from 40 to 60 feet high, 
and is often limbless for 
half this height, with 
large spreading upper 
branches. The starchy 
fruit hanging from short 
thick stems is about the 
size of a child’s head. It 
is first green, then brown, 
and when ripe turns yel¬ 
low. 

The breadfruit is pre¬ 
pared for use in a num¬ 
ber of ways. The natives 
of the South Sea Islands 
usually gather it just 
before it is ripe and bake 
it entire in hot embers. 

They then scoop out the 
inside, which when prop¬ 
erly cooked is soft and 
smooth with a taste not 
unlike boiled potatoes 
and sweet milk. Another 
method consists in cut¬ 
ting it into thin slices 
which are dried in the 
sun and then baked or 
made into a flour which 
is used in preparing pud¬ 
dings, bread, and biscuit. 

The fruit is kept by stor¬ 
ing it in pits where it ferments and becomes sour, 
but after baking under hot stones, it yields a pleasant 
food. One author says of it: “With meat and 
gravy it is a vegetable superior to anything I know 
either in temperate or tropical countries. With 
sugar, milk, butter, or treacle it is a delicious pud¬ 
ding, having a very slight and delicate but charac¬ 
teristic flavor, which one never gets tired of.” 

From the fibrous inner bark of the tree a cloth is 
made, and from the wood, canoes and furniture. 
The sticky milky juice which exudes from cuts in 
the stem is used in making a kind of glue. 

The breadfruit tree belongs to the Moraceae family, which 
also produces the osage orange. A somewhat similar, 
though inferior, fruit is produced by the Jack (Artocarpus 
integrifolia) growing in India, Ceylon, and the Eastern 
Archipelago. It is much eaten by natives in India. 
BREAKFAST cereals. The modern breakfast 
cereals, whether brown and crisp and ready to serve 
from the package, or meant to be cooked into a 
| delicious steaming hot dish, make the first meal of 


the day quite different from the usual breakfast of 
only a few years ago. Then oatmeal porridge, corn- 
meal mush, boiled cracked wheat, or perhaps the 
old English dish “frumenty,” made by boiling wheat 
kernels with milk and spices, were practically the 
only “cereal” foods used. The modern breakfast 
foods, by making break¬ 
fast a simple, light, and 
wholesome meal, have 
done much to improve the 
diet of all civilized coun¬ 
tries, especially for chil¬ 
dren. 

This great change in 
the breakfast menu has 
developed an enormous 
industry. Every year 
new forms of breakfast 
cereals, cooked or un¬ 
cooked, are placed on the 
market. We have break¬ 
fast foods flaked, malted, 
shredded, ground, 
cracked, rolled, and 
puffed. The Department 
of Agriculture of the 
United States tells us how 
they are prepared: 

“The ready-to-eat 
brands are prepared in 
a great variety of ways. 
Some are probably simply 
cooked in water and then 
dried and crushed. Some 
are made of a different 
mixture of grains, some 
have common salt, malt, 
and apparently sugar, 
molasses, or other carbo¬ 
hydrate material added 
to them, some probably contain caramel or other 
similar coloring matter. Those with a flaky appear¬ 
ance are made like rolled grains, save that the cooking 
is continued longer. Those which look like dried 
crumbs are probably made into a dough, baked, 
crushed, and browned. The shredded preparations 
are made with special machinery which tears the 
steam-cooked kernels into shreds and deposits them 
into layers or bundles. Very many of the ready-to- 
eat cereals are parched or toasted before packing. 
This gives them a darker color, makes them more crisp, 
and imparts a flavor which many persons relish.” 

The puffed grains are most ingeniously made. 
Kernels of the grains are thoroughly cleaned, then 
they are placed in a gun-like cylinder and cooked 
with live steam. When the kernels have become 
thoroughly saturated with this exceedingly hot steam, 
they are shot from the cylinder into very cold air. 
Puff—the heat within the kernels bursts the cells and 
swells the grains to several times their natural size— 


bread 


THAT GROWS ON TREES 



_ mmam 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could step out in your backyard, 
like this happy savage, and pick a dinner whenever you were 
hungry! Breadfruit may be baked and eaten fresh, or pounded 
to a pulp and allowed to ferment, forming a sour paste much relished 
by the Pacific islanders. 


contained in the Eaey Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

501 









BREAKFAST CEREALS 


BRICK AND TILE 



“shot from guns,” as some advertising genius called 
the process. 

The first cereal breakfast food was probably made 
from oats, and that grain is used more largely today 
than any other in the making of breakfast foods. 
Let us see the processes by which the grain that pours 
from the threshing machine is changed to the “rolled 
oats” with which we are so familiar. 

When the selected oats arrive at the mill they are 
sucked up into large storage bins through big iron 
pipes, to remain there until they are milled. Then 
they are thoroughly cleaned, and the ends of the 
grains are snipped off in a machine equipped with 
little clippers to aid in removing the hulls later on. 
Next comes the roasting, the most important part 
of the making of oatmeal, rolled oats, or other cereal; 
for by roasting the oil in the tiny cells is released 
and the whole grain flavored by it, just as in coffee 
roasting. This roasting is done either in a kiln dryer, 
where hot air coming from below keeps blowing the 
grains up in the air and stirring them about—a won¬ 
derful device that is capable of drying a carload of 
oats in about three-quarters of an hour; or by putting 
them through a machine like a coffee roaster; or 
sometimes even by roasting them in open pans over 
fires. After roasting, the huller takes the oats and 
passes them through rollers so set that the hulls will 
be slipped off. If any kernels get through without 
having their hulls removed, the “tailer” slips them 
back to go through again. Some are sent through 
rollers three or four times. The hulls are blown 
away by blasts of air. 

Softened by steaming the grains, or “groats” as 
they are now called, pass between big polished steam 
rollers that flatten them into flakes. Then they are 
poured into boxes, sealed by machinery, and dried in 
heat sufficient to kill any lurking germs. 

The by-products, such as the hulls, middlings, and 
oat-dust, are sold to stockmen for mixing with other 
feeds. 

Bremen ( bra’min ), Germany. Can you imagine 
New York City, Philadelphia, or Baltimore as a part 
of the United States and at the same time a republic 
in itself? This is the queer position of the three 
so-called “free cities” of Germany—Hamburg, 
Lubeck, and Bremen. Founded in the Middle Ages, 
these cities early became important commercial 
centers (see Hanseatic League), and gained the right 
to manage their own affairs. Although they entered 
into the federated German Empire in 1871, they 
retained their rights of local self-government much 
as our states retained similar rights when they became 
parts of the United States. 

Hamburg and Bremen have developed into the two 
leading seaports of Germany. Bremen, the second in 
rank, is situated on both banks of the Weser River, 
about 50 miles from its mouth. On the left bank is the 
new section, composed chiefly of residences along wide 
well-paved streets, while on the narrow winding streets 
on the right bank are to be seen the old council house 



and the merchants’ hall, side by side with the new 
cotton exchange and other modern business buildings. 

Smaller vessels can come up to the docks in Bremen, 
and the offices of all the great shipping companies 
are in the city; but most of the large ocean-going 
steamships dock at the city’s port, Bremerhaven, 
which is only ten miles from the open sea. Through 
this port passed most of the trade between Germany 
and America before the World War of 1914-18. The 
United States sent to Bremen cotton, tobacco, rice, 
grain, petroleum, and timber, and received from it 
aniline dyes, cotton hosiery and laces, woolen cloth, 
and children’s toys. From it, too, came the greater 
number of the German emigrants to America, for it 
was the headquarters of the Great North German 
Lloyd steamship company. 

The district ruled by Bremen has an area of 99 
square miles, of which one-half is meadow and pasture 
land, and one-quarter is under tillage. Population 
of the city of Bremen, about 250,000; of the whole 
district, 300,000. 

BREST, France. Near the tip of the rugged coast 
of Brittany, in northwestern France, lies the great 
seaport of Brest, one of the most important French 
naval stations, and the scene of several historic sea 
battles between England and France. Ships enter 
the wide rock-bound harbor through a narrow strait 
guarded by a formidable system of modern forts. 

The city is built on the steep slopes of two hills, 
separated by the Penfeld River. An imposing castle 
and donjon, built between the 12th and 16th cen¬ 
turies, stand above the river mouth. Between the 
town and harbor mouth, the Cours d’Ajot, one of 
the finest promenades in Europe, skirts the shore. 

Brest was one of the principal ports used by the 
American Expeditionary Forces in the World War. 
Many of the soldiers who were quartered there retain 
vivid recollections of the discomforts, due to rain and 
mud, before the hastily-built American barracks and 
drill grounds had been adapted to the unfavorable 
climate. Before the war was over, American engi¬ 
neers had made large and permanent improvements 
in the harbor and railway facilities. 

Important sardine and mackerel fisheries have 
their headquarters at Brest, as well as large flour 
mills, chemical plants, and other varied industries. 
But the life of the city centers chiefly around the 
French naval gun foundries, ammunition factories, 
shipyards, and repairing docks. A submarine cable 
runs from Brest to America, and many transatlantic 
passenger lines touch here. Population, about 90,000. 
B R ICK and Tile. The story of bricks carries 
us back to the dawn of civilization, for almost as soon 
as men began to erect temples and palaces, they 
learned that a cheap and durable building material 
could be obtained by molding clay into rectangular 
masses and allowing it to harden, either in the sun 
or in artificial heat. Kiln-burned bricks made by 
the Babylonians 6,000 years ago still exist, and the 
entire site once occupied by the vanished city of 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or nation 

502 









HOW 


Babylon is little more than a huge mound made by 
the breaking down and dissolving of the former huts 
and houses of sun-baked brick. 

Egyptians and Bricks 

The ancient Egyptians had an inexhaustible supply 
of brick-making material in the clay 
which forms the bed of the river Nile, 
and brick-making was always one of 
their chief industries. Because this clay 
lacked tenacity, the Egyptians used to 
add chopped straw or reeds, which 
served to bind the bricks together. You 
remember how the children of Israel 
during the mournful years of their bond¬ 
age in Egypt were set at making bricks, 
and how the cruel taskmasters added to 
their woes by requiring them to make , 

“bricks, without straw”; that is, ordered 
their, to furnish their own straw without 
diminishing the quantity of bricks pro¬ 
duced in a given time. The Egyptian 
bricks were nearly all sun-dried, not 
kiln-burned, and so were like the adobe 
bricks of Mexico and the southwestern 
part of the United States which are still 
used where there is no frost to freeze 
the moisture in the bricks and crack 


materials close at hand. The industry is widely 
scattered because bricks can be made of almost any 
kind of clay, mixed with sand. Brick clay consists 
largely of hydrated silicates of aluminum, with oxide 
or carbonate of iron, and various other substances. 


TIAN BRICKS WERE MOLDED 


The mixture of clay and chopped straw was packed by hand into individual 
molds and then piled up in the sun until partly dry. Then the mold was taken 
off and the drying completed. Egyptian bricks were rarely baked with fire, so 
that most of the ancient brick buildings in the Nile valley have crumbled. 


ANCIENT BRICKMAKER 


This Egyptian slavo of the days of Rameses the Great is shown 
mixing the Nile clay with chopped straw to make the building 
material for some great temple. He is using a primitive type of 
hoe, while a slavedriver stands over him with a whip. 

Today brick-making is one of the world’s great 
industries. You will scarcely find a community of 
any size without its own brick plant, unless it has 
an abundant and cheap supply of other building 


When they are burned, bricks of this composition 
have a buff, salmon, or red color, due to the presence 
of the iron. If much carbonate of lime or chalk is 
present, the color is sulphur-yellow. If sand is not 
already present in the clay, it must be added. If 
there is too much sand the bricks are likely to 
crumble, and if there is too little the bricks will 
easily crack. 

Biography of a Brickbat 
In making bricks, the clay is thoroughly cleaned 
and mixed with water in what is known as a “pug- 
mill.” In this are rotating blades which cut and 
thoroughly mix the clay. Sometimes anthracite 
coal dust is added to help in the burning of the 
bricks. The mixture then goes to the brick-making 
machine, except in small plants, where it is molded 
by hand. There are three general types of machines 
—the soft-mud machine, the stiff-mud machine, 
and the dry-clay machine. In the stiff-mud pro¬ 
cess, which is the most generally used, the machine 
has a trough, with a feed hole at one end and a 
delivery hole at the other. A central shaft carries 
heavy knives, so arranged that when the shaft is 
turned the clay is thoroughly mixed and kneaded, 
and forced through the rectangular opening in a 
column of soft brick. This column is cut in proper 
lengths by wires. This process produces a slightly 
harder and more durable brick than the soft-mud 
process, in which machinery presses the mixed clay 
into molds. In the expensive dry-press process the 
clay is almost dried before it is introduced into the 
machine, and the bricks are made in steel molds under 


the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his 


503 


work 


contained in 





















BRICK AND TILE 



How They Are “Burned” 





Here we see how bricks are made today. A steam 
shovel digs clay and loads it on a narrow-gauge railway 
train. Next we see a long bar of kneaded clay passing 
through a machine which cuts it into brick sizes. In 
the center is a view of a brick plant, equipped with 
“down draft” kilns. The bricks are piled inside those 
round huts; the fire, which is built in the center of the 
kiln, strikes the rounded roof and passes down through 
the spaces between the bricks to a flue beneath the floor, 
which leads out underground and up into the neighboring 
tall chimney. In the next picture, workmen are shown 
firing one of those kilns. At the bottom expert brick- 
makers are examining the bricks after the kiln has cooled. 

You can see inside the kiln how the bricks are piled on 
edge with spaces between them, through which the 
heat passes. 

For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 


for some time and the moisture from the inte¬ 
rior comes to the surface as water, carrying 
with it the soluble salts of the clay. These 
salts are deposited as the water evaporates, 
leaving the white scum often seen on improp¬ 
erly dried bricks. 

The bricks are now ready for the most 
important part of the process—the burning. 


great pressure. Most of the finest brick for artistic 
front wall or decorative interior work is made by 
this process. 

Out of the Drying Tunnels into the Fire 

From the machines the bricks go to the drying 
tunnels, to be dried for about 24 hours in a moderate 
temperature before being burned in the kilns. Some¬ 
times they are piled in the 
open to dry slowly, but 
artificially dried bricks 
burn more evenly. The 
drying tunnels are heated 
usually by the exhaust 
heat from the kilns, and 
the atmosphere must be 
kept dry by ventilation 
devices. If the air gets 
too moist, the surface of 
the brick remains damp 






On this depends very 
largely their strength and 
durability, as the action 
of the heat brings about 
chemical actions which 
entirely alter the struc¬ 
ture of the clay. The 
bricks are piled in kilns 
so arranged that the fire 
may reach every part of 
them. Sometimes the 
bricks themselves are 
piled to make their own kiln and a fire started 
inside; by this method a great number of bricks 
may be burned at one time. The firing takes from 
10 to 15 days according to the method employed. 
Bricks for ordinary purposes are kept at a cherry-red 


504 




















| Uses of Tiles 

heat, with a continuous sheet of roaring flame filling 
the whole interior of the kiln. Others for finer pur¬ 
poses are raised almost to white heat. 

Various Types of Brick 

Paving or vitrified brick must be very hard to 
withstand the wear of heavy traffic. In making 
these bricks, lime is added to the clay and the burning 
is done at a more intense heat than in making common 
brick. Facing bricks, those which occupy prominent 
positions in fine buildings, are put into a re-press 
before they are dried, wdiich squares the corners and 
edges and gives them a smooth surface; sometimes 
they are specially surfaced, as in so-called “tapestry 
brick.” Fire brick, for lining furnaces and fireplaces, 
is made to withstand the heat by using clay that has 
in it very little if any fusible materials. 

The size of the American brick varies slightly but 


is usually 8 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 2 inches 
thick. In England the bricks are slightly larger. 

Tiles are made in much the same way as bricks. They are 
of various shapes and patterns, and they have a wide range 
of uses in building, such as covering roofs, paving floors, 
and for many decorative purposes. Hollow tiles are used 
for drains and for chimneys, and to a great extent in the 
construction of fire-proof walls, floors, and partitions. 

The most common form of tile is that used for drains and 
sewers. Machines make these drain-pipes of ordinary brick 
clay by squeezing a continuous length of clay through an open¬ 
ing, as a soft hollow tube; this is then cut to proper lengths, 
dried, and burned in a kiln. Roofing tiles are made by com¬ 
pressing pulverized clay in metal dies under a steel press, 
and then firing, after which they are decorated and glazed. 

Fine wall and floor tiles, sometimes known as encaustic 
tiles, are made of especially pure grades of clay, which is 
dried, ground to powder, subjected to heavy pressure in 
metal molds, and then baked. For floor purposes unglazed 
tiles are used, often laid in patterns of different colors. 
Glazed tiles are used for walls of bathrooms and kitchens. 




B RIDGE. A tree trunk fallen across a stream, or a 
stout vine growing over a ravine served very well 
as a bridge for primitive man. Stones and timbers 
placed in the stream as props make it possible to 
build longer bridges, and tough vines woven together 
form rude hammock bridges suspended from bank to 
bank. A single strip of rawhide makes a native 
bridge in out-of-the-way India, and holding to a stick 
hooked over this cable the traveler is hauled across 
the stream by someone on the opposite bank. Man 
does not go far on the road to civilization before the 
pathway bridge becomes a highway bridge for horse, 
cart, and wagon; and finally the “iron horse” with 
its thousand-ton loads of freight demands new and 
stronger bridges. 


What miracle workers the modern builders are, 
and what wonder-bridges they have built! The 
“suspension” or hanging bridge, to which type be¬ 
longs the strip of rawhide, and the hammock bridge 
of vines, becomes the giant network of steel cables 
strengthened to bear aloft a firm level roadway. 

Three of the largest suspension bridges in the w r orld 
span East River at New York City. In the famous 
Brooklyn bridge two huge tow r ers of masonry hold 
aloft four steel cables from which the roadway is 
supported. To make the cables, more than 5,000 
steel wires are woven into a rope as large around as a 
man’s body. Downward over the stream they curve 
from the towers and back to land on the other side, 
where their ends are anchored securely in blocks of 


contained in the Easy Ref ere nee Fact-Index at the end of this work 

505 







] BRIDGE 



Wonders of Bridge Building 


masonry buried deep in the earth. The other two 
suspension bridges—the Manhattan and Williams¬ 
burg bridges—have been built since the Brooklyn 
bridge, and steel towers are used instead of masonry. 
The Williamsburg bridge has a river span of 1,600 feet, 
the longest span in any bridge of its type, and the Man¬ 
hattan bridge is said to have the largest carrying 
capacity of any bridge in the world. The four cables 
of this bridge could support a weight of 20,000 loaded 
army trucks or of two great ocean steamships. 

Hellgate bridge, another notable New York bridge, 
has the largest arch in the world. It is a steel arch 
with a 1,000-foot span, carrying four railway tracks. 
The Romans were the first to use the arch construction 
successfully in their famous stone aqueducts and 
bridges, but they used a series of arches and did not 
attempt to build spans of more than 50 feet. In the 
Key West railroad, modern engineers, using 48 coral 
islands called “keys” as stepping stones, have built a 
series of arches to carry a railroad over 100 miles 
of open sea between the mainland of Florida and 
Key West. In vain the ocean storms hurl their 
fury against this sturdy pathway across the waves. 

Over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, 51,000 tons 
of steel have been woven into a giant bridge holding 
aloft two railway tracks so firmly that express trains 
may safely pass at a speed of 60 to 70 miles an hour. 
Even in violent storms that wreck ships at its base 
and blow men off their feet, this bridge stands secure. 
To rivet the steel plates and beams together, more 
than 6,000,000 rivets were required. From 4,000 to 
5,000 men worked on the bridge, and it took seven 
years to build it. It has 145 acres of surface to be 
painted each year. 

This bridge is one of the most famous of the “canti¬ 
lever” bridges. Its two spans are 1,710 feet long, the 
longest span ever built until the completion of the 
Quebec bridge, with its single span of 1,800 feet, also 
of the cantilever type. 

The Bridge that is Built Like a Bracket 

The cantilever bridge is called a bracket bridge 
because each end of a span is built out like a bracket 
braced on a firm foundation, and a center portion is 
then riveted to the ends like a shelf supported on 
wall brackets. Cantilever bridges, like suspension 
bridges, can be built in long spans, so these types 
are chosen where center supports would be a hindrance 
to navigation, or where the water is deep and swift, 
making difficult the building of piers. 

A log over a stream is the type of the “girder” 
bridge. Two logs or beams with cross-pieces laid 
over them make the common highway bridge of the 
girder type. With steel beams or “trusses” very 
substantial bridges of this type are built, but con¬ 
struction is limited to comparatively short spans. 
Many viaducts built to carry railroads over valleys 
are of this type, as are also the elevated railway tracks. 

Girder bridges, cantilever bridges, and suspension 
bridges are the main types, but there are many other 
kinds, for practically every bridge gives the engineer 


new problems to work out. Especially interesting are 
the movable bridges constructed so as to permit large 
ships to pass. Some, called bascule bridges, are 
divided in the middle and tilt up like the blades of a 
jack-knife. In others a central span turns on a pivot, 
or is lifted up the sides of towers built for that pur¬ 
pose. Of this latter type, the most famous example 
is the Tower Bridge at London. Opening and closing 
of such bridges is done very quickly by machinery, 
often electrically operated, so as not to delay either 
the bridge or river traffic. The “pontoon” bridge or 
bridge of boats is another odd type which has been 
used by armies from time immemorial. At times 
pontoons are even used as permanent bridges, al¬ 
though they are a barrier to the passage of boats. 
Here and there we still find the picturesque old 
covered wooden bridges built a century or so ago. And 
dating from a yet remoter past are those quaint old 
bridges—such as the still standing Ponte Vecchio of 
Florence, Italy, and the former London Bridge of 
nursery fame—whose roadways were lined on each 
side by shops and houses. 

Do You Like Adventure? This is the Life for You 

If you like adventure, consider the life of the bridge 
builder. Looking through his eyes and listening with 
his ears, we find the mighty bridges alive again with 
the industry of their building. Men ride the great 
steel beams as they are swung up to their lofty posi¬ 
tion by snorting puffing derricks. Men climb up the 
framework of the bridge and run across beams far out 
over the water busy with their work of placing, rivet¬ 
ing, hammering, until the whole structure hums like a 
giant beehive. 

To work his triumphs the bridge builder chooses his 
material with care and often brings it from great dis¬ 
tances. Steel for the making of giant bridges must 
pass severe tests of strength and endurance. Samples 
are put into machines that pound it with monstrous 
weights, bend and twist it, draw it out, and test it in 
every way, for the completed bridge must bear heavy 
weights and endure just such strains and stresses. It 
must bear the weight of all traffic that may at any 
time crowd onto its length. When a body of soldiers 
march in step over a bridge, the bridge vibrates and 
swings in rhythm with their step. Similarly the 
stopping and starting of street cars and the move¬ 
ment of all traffic on the bridge tests its strength more 
than an equal weight at rest. The strong winds 
wrestle mightily with the bridge, and the modern 
bridge builder has learned to take them into account 
for they may add to the burden of the bridge as much 
as 50 or 60 pounds to the square foot. Most myste¬ 
rious of all perhaps are the strains due to changes in 
temperature. The material of the bridge contracts 
with the cold and expands with the heat with such 
irresistible force that the bridge builder must allow 
for a definite amount of lengthening and shortening of 
the bridge parts. Strange as it may seem, one-half 
hour of bright sunshine may be a more severe test of 
a bridge than the passage of a 350-ton train. 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

506 







| Clever Bridge Devices 



BRIDGE 


TWO FAMOUS EXAMPLES OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS’ SKILL 



This is the famous Tower Bridge over the Thames at London. As you pass over the driveway it has the solid appearance of an 
ordinary paved street. Yet when .a ship approaches, this driveway splits in the center, and the two bascules swing up smoothly 
and easily, as if the two great towers were giants slowly lifting their arms. Meanwhile foot-passengers can climb the towers and 
cross to the upper bridge. The bascule bridge has become popular in many American cities, where a comparatively narrow shipping 

channel is spanned. 




* 4 - fhP cantilever type of bridge has proved extremely successful. This famous railway bridge at Quebec, 

jr spanning great distances the cantilev typ k -“ d in th ' worl( j. It is built in three sections, consisting of two huge brackets 

ith a span of 1,800 feet, is pe *j lap ? * h . Jj dc lle by a short truss. Such bridges can be built out from the balancing piers without 
ilanced on piers. and c°nnected m th ^ ne y twork of braces makes them self-supporting at each step of the work. 


in the Easy Reference Fact-Index 
































BRIDGE 



Using the Cable and the Arch 



THE BRIDGE THAT WALKS A TIGHT ROPE 

The great cables of a suspension bridge sustain the weight of the 
bridge and its traffic very much as that tight rope sustains the 
weight of the performer, the chief difference being that in the 
case of the bridge the weight is suspended below. The cables 
at either end of the bridge are anchored to bases in the ground. 
The two top pictures are views of the famous suspension bridge 
between New York and Brooklyn. 


VAULTING OVER A WIDE RIVER 



The arched bridge is not only one of the strongest, but also one 
of the most beautiful forms of bridges. The small drawing in 
the lower right-hand corner illustrates the principle of the arch, 
in which the weight is carried down each side of the curve to the 
supporting piers. Arched bridges of wedge-shaped stones locked 
at the middle with a keystone were favorites in ancient times. 

But today reinforced concrete is more often employed. 


For any tubject not found in it, alphabetical place tee information 

508 






























The Bridge that Folds Up 



BRIDGE 



THE “JACK-KNIFE” BRIDGE 

The two upper pictures illustrate the general principle of the 
Jack-Knife” bridge. Such bridges are used over navigable 
streams with low banks, and are so counterbalanced with great 
weights, that they swing upward with comparative ease on their 
great hinges, following the ancient principle of the well sweep. 
Thus vessels are allowed to pass. Electric or steam engines 
usually provide the power for opening and closing these bridges. 



THE “BOOK-SHELF” BRIDGE 

These lower pictures show how the bracket principle which 
is so commonly used to support bookshelves is also em¬ 
ployed in bridge building. The bridges, however, usually 
consist of double brackets forming what is called a “canti¬ 
lever,” balanced on a pier in the middle, with one side pro¬ 
jecting out over the stream and the other side back toward 
the land. 


in the E a * y 


Reference Fact-Index 


509 


a t 


the end of this 


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contained 


















BRITISH COLUMBIA| 


[BRIDGEPORT 

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. The “industrial capital” of 
Connecticut and the second largest city in the state, 
Bridgeport is known especially for the variety and 
extent of its manufacturing interests. It is located 
on Long Island Sound, 54 miles northeast of New 
York City. The name of Bridgeport has long been 
associated with sewing machines and firearms. The 
Wheeler and Wilson sewing-machine company moved 
their plant here in 1856, and the Howe factory came 
in 1863; and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, 
also located here, is the largest cartridge factory in 
the world. Besides these, there are large manufac¬ 
tories of corsets, silver and plated ware, automobiles, 
phonographs, electrical supplies, machinery, hard¬ 
ware, rubber goods, woolen goods, and of aluminum, 
bronze, and brassware. 

Perhaps the best-known citizen Bridgeport ever had 
was Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891), the great show¬ 
man and prince of advertisers. In his own autobiog¬ 
raphy he tells how he started his fortune by buying 
an old slave woman and showing her as George Wash¬ 
ington’s nurse. He founded a dime museum in New 
York, and presented Tom Thumb, a dwarf two feet 
high, to crowned heads in Europe; he brought Jenny 
Lind, the “ Swedish Nightingale,” to the United States 
for a concert tour; exhibited the Siamese Twins; and 
started his great circus in 1871. He made Bridgeport 
his home, housed his circus there in winter, and 
developed the tract now known as East Bridgeport. 

Bridgeport harbor divides the city into three parts. 
The main city and the chief business center lie west 
of the harbor, with the wholesale district along the 
bank, the retail section farther back, and numerous 
factories along the line of the railway to the west. 
“East” Bridgeport occupies a peninsula and here 
some of the largest manufacturing establishments are 
located. Summerfield and Newfield are east of the 
harbor. The Pequonnock River and the harbor arms 
are spanned by half a dozen bridges. 

Bridgeport has excellent transportation, both by 
rail and by water. There are daily steamboats to 


New York City and across the sound to Port Jefferson, 
L.I. The city and its attractive suburbs are the 
home of many people whose business interests are in 
New York City, and it has several excellent parks 
which make attractive recreation spots for its great 
industrial population of many nationalities. 

The first settlement was made in 1639 on lands 
bought from the Paugusset Indians, and was known 
as Pequonnock. In 1800 the borough of Bridgeport 
was incorporated. Population, about 145,000. 
BRISTOL, England. The dignified old city of 
Bristol has from the dawn of its history been a trading 
center. Situated at the junction of the Avon and 
Frome rivers, it can be reached by large steamers, 
and each year millions of dollars’ worth of exports and 
imports pass through its harbor. The city has long 
been famous for its glassworks, potteries, soapworks, 
tanneries, tobacco factories, and shipyards. In the 
latter was built, in 1838, the Great Western, the first 
steamship to cross the Atlantic. 

About the year 1000 a Saxon settlement began to 
grow up at the junction of the two rivers, and by the 
time of the Norman Conquest, in 1066, it had attained 
considerable size and importance. From Bristol the 
Cabots sailed on their voyage to explore the New 
World found by Columbus. Bristol fishermen settled 
Newfoundland, and it was the home of Admiral Penn, 
father of the founder of Pennsylvania. It was also 
the home of the poets Coleridge and Southey, and 
many landmarks recall the former glories of the town. 
Supreme among these relics is St. Mary Redcliffe, 
called by Queen Elizabeth “the fairest, the goodliest, 
and the most famous parish church in England.” 
This church was built in the 13th century, while the 
cathedral dates back to the middle of the 12th. Some 
of the schools are almost as old as the churches, their 
history beginning with the days of the Reformation in 
the 16th century. The principal institution for 
higher education, Bristol University, is extremely 
young, having grown out of University College, 
founded in 1876. Population, about 360,000. 


The SUNSET GATEWAY PROVINCE 


TTRITISH COLUMBIA, 

Canada. A wild 
chaos of forest-clad 
snow-capped mountains 
covers nearly all of 
British Columbia, the 
“Sunset Gateway” prov¬ 
ince of Canada. 


Extent .—North and south, about 700 miles; east and west, about 400 
miles; area, 388,263 square miles. Population, about 720,000. 

Physical Features .—Chief mountains: Island Range on Vancouver and 
Queen Charlotte Islands, Coast Range (6,000 to 8,000 feet). Rocky 
Mountains (8,000 to 12,000 feet); highest peak, Mt. Robson, 
13,068 feet. Rivers: Columbia, Fraser, Kootenay, Skeena, Finlay, 
Stikine, Peace, and Liard. 

Products. —Lumber, pulp, and paper, ships; wheat, oats, hay, pota¬ 
toes, etc.; copper, coal, zinc, gold, silver, lead; salmon and other 
fisheries and canneries, fish. 

Cities .—Vancouver (115,000 population); Victoria (capital 60,000): 
New Westminster (17,000). 


Through the deep gorges and valleys between the 
mountains flow many swift turbulent rivers, turning 
and winding with an abruptness unparalleled in any 
other region of the world, as they strive to find 
their way to the sea. Here and there the mountain 
walls draw apart, leaving wide valleys and plateaus 
where fruits and cereals flourish. 

On the side bordering the Pacific the mountains 


of Can ad a 

have been partially sub¬ 
merged in past ages, giv¬ 
ing British Columbia one 
of the most remarkable 
coast lines in the world, 
everywhere deeply cut by 
sounds and inlets and 
gloomy fiords walled by 
stupendous precipices, like the coast of Norway. 
Though the province is only about 700 miles from north 
to south, the coast line with all its indentations meas¬ 
ures 7,000 miles—long enough, if straightened out, 
to reach to the southern tip of South America. The 
tops of some of the submerged mountain masses still 
stand above the surface of the ocean, appearing as a 
host of islands which thickly fringe the entire length 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 

510 







This scene is typical of the wild beauty of Western British Columbia. Here the Canadian Pacific Railway crosses the continental 
divide from Banff by way of Kicking-Horse Pass, and comes down the Wapta River. The peak is Mount Wapta on the Wapta River. 

contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of t his work 

511 










































BRITISH COLUMBIA 



VICTORIA, CAPITAL OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 



Victoria is beautifully situated at the southern end of Vancouver Island on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In the foreground is a 
yacht basin and at the left the big Empress Hotel. In the middle distance rise the splendid Parliament buildings, where the gov¬ 
ernment of the province is carried on. The city began as a trading post and fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company, established in 

1843. It became the capital of British Columbia in 1868. 


of the coast. Vancouver Island, with its area of 
13,050 square miles and its rich deposits of coal, iron, 
and copper, is an important part of the province. 
On it is located the capital, Victoria (60,000 popu¬ 
lation), and on the mainland across the straits are the 
other chief cities, Vancouver (115,000), and New 
Westminster (17,000). (See Vancouver; Victoria.) 

The two chief mountain systems are the Coast 
Range, rising sharply from the Pacific to heights of 
6,000 to 8,000 feet, and the Rocky Mountains on the 
eastern side, where many of the peaks tower 11,000 
and 12,000 feet above sea-level, forming some of the 
grandest scenery in the world. Between these two 
systems lie other less extensive ranges, notably the 
Selkirks, whose wooded slopes and enormous glaciers 
attract thousands of tourists. Great stretches have 
been set aside as national parks and reserves, which 
are becoming the Alpine playground of America. 

To the west of the Rocky Mountains is a remark¬ 
able valley, 800 miles long and from one to six miles 
wide. In this rise seven of the great Pacific coast 
rivers, among them the Kootenay, Columbia, Fraser, 
and Finlay. The Columbia and its chief tributary, 
the Kootenay, take a bewildering course through the 
valleys between the eastern ranges, running north and 
south in great loops. Although they are so close at 
Columbia Lake that a canal a mile long connects 
them, they flow on, playing hide-and-seek with each 
other for hundreds of miles before they meet 20 miles 
from the United States frontier. 

Vast Natural Wealth of the Province 

Untold mineral wealth—coal, gold, silver, copper, 
lead, zinc, iron, and petroleum—lies locked in the 
depths of the mountains. Already production has 
reached a total of nearly three-quarters of a billion 


dollars, and the industry is still in its infancy. Three- 
quarters of the province is covered with valuable 
timber, chiefly Douglas fir, red cedar, spruce, yellow 
pine, larch, and hemlock. The Douglas fir, which is 
not found elsewhere in Canada, makes the finest 
building timber of America. Its gigantic size—often 
300 feet high and 15 feet in diameter—makes it 
especially valuable for the great timbers needed for 
trestles and wharves. Unlimited water-power is pro¬ 
vided by the network of streams and lakes. 

In the value of its fisheries, British Columbia leads 
all the other provinces. On the Fraser River are to 
be found some of the* largest salmon canneries of the 
world, with an output in some years exceeding 
810,000,000 in value. When the salmon come up the 
river to spawn some of the streams are almost literally 
choked with fish. 

Much fine farming and grazing land is found in the 
valleys and river deltas and on the lower plateaus and 
terraces of the interior. It is estimated that there are 
about 25,000,000 acres suitable for cultivation, of 
which less than half a million acres are being worked 
as yet. Fruit of the finest quality is produced in the 
southern valleys, notably the Okanagan and Koot¬ 
enay districts in the southeast, while grains thrive 
in the valleys farther north. Irrigation is necessary 
in many parts of the interior, because the warm winds 
from the Pacific deposit their moisture on the western 
slopes of the Coast Range and pass eastward as dry 
Chinook winds. Along the coast these warm winds 
create an equable climate with mild winters and 
abundance of rainfall, but inland the extremes of 
temperature become far greater, with hot summers 
and cold winters. In the little-explored north the 
winters are almost arctic, because the Rockies are 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see information 









The Gold Rush 


BRITISH EMPIRE 



here too low to act as a barrier against the icy blasts 
that sweep down from the interior plains and the 
Arctic coast. 

When First the White Men Came 

It was the discovery of gold in 1858 which first led 
to the settlement of British Columbia. Although the 
province had perhaps been reached by Sir Francis 
Drake in 1578-79, and certainly by Spanish explorers 
in 1774, and Captain Cook in 1778, no efforts had been 
made to settle it by Great Britain, except for the trad¬ 
ing posts of the enterprising Hudson’s Bay Company. 
Boundary controversies with the United States were 
settled in 1846 and 1872. When the gold rush came 
in 1858, a more efficient government was needed, and 
British Columbia was made a crown colony. For 
some years British Columbia stood out against 
federation with the rest of Canada, but the province 
finally agreed in 1871 to join the Dominion on condi¬ 
tion that a railroad be built from coast to coast. This 
was the origin of the Canadian Pacific Railway which, 
with several other great railways, brings to the port 
of Vancouver large quantities of grain and lumber, 
thus making that city one of the important shipping 
centers of the western coast. Another Pacific railway 
terminus is at Prince Rupert, at the mouth of the 
Skeena River, 500 miles to the north. Area of British 
Columbia, 388,263 square miles; population, about 
720,000. 

BRITISH empire. Four great events in the 18th 
century changed the course of human history. These 
were the birth of the United States, the French Revo¬ 
lution, the Industrial Revolution, and—last, but not 
least—the founding of the British Empire. 

This great colonial empire, which is scattered in 
every quarter of the globe and on which “the sun 
never sets,” was built up partly by successful combat 
with the Spanish, Dutch, and French empires which 
preceded it, and partly by discovery and patient set¬ 
tlement. 

By the method of conquest England in 1713 ac¬ 
quired from France Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and 
Hudson Bay territory, and in 1763 France surrendered 
to her the rest of Canada. At the same date, which 
marks the close of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), 
French influence was overthrown in India, and 
British supremacy was established there also. By 
settlement England acquired the Thirteen Colonies, 
which seceded from the empire in the American 
Revolution, as well as important possessions in the 
West Indies and elsewhere. It was the explorations 
of Captain Cook (in 1769, 1772, 1776), and the settle¬ 
ment of Botany Bay (1788) and Port Nicholson (1839) 
that gave her title to Australia, New Zealand, and 
other valuable possessions in the Pacific Ocean. 

In the 19th century the British Empire steadily 
grew in size and strength. The beginnings of her 
African dominions had already been made on the west 
coast (Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Gulf of Guinea, 
etc.) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Cape Colony 
was conquered from Holland in 1806, while that coun¬ 


try was aiding the French Emperor Napoleon in his 
wars against Great Britain. In 1843 the independent 
Dutch republic of Natal was added, and the victory 
of the British in the Boer War (1899-1902) brought 
the Transvaal and Orange Free State under the 
British flags. These British possessions, known since 
1909 as the Union of South Africa, were enlarged at 
the close of the World War, 1914-18, when as a 
“mandatary” of the League of Nations the Union 
received German Southwest Africa. At the same 
time Great Britain, also a mandatary, was given 
German East Africa, now known as the Territory of 
Tanganyika. This connects the British possessions 
in southern Africa with those in the northeast, British 
East Africa (Uganda and Kenya Colony), the Egyp¬ 
tian Sudan, and Egypt, and so assures an “all-British 
route” for the Cape-to-Cairo railway. Egypt, the 
fertile land of the Nile, though occupied by Great 
Britain since 1882, was nominally a part of the 
Turkish Empire until the World War; now it is a 
regular British protectorate, though under its own 
Sultan. That same great conflict added also to the 
empire, as a mandatary, Mesopotamia and Palestine 
in western Asia; while all the former German islands 
south of the Equator were assigned either to the self- 
governing Commonwealth of Australia or to the 
Dominion of New Zealand. To all of these territories 
must be added Great Britain’s other possessions— 
such as Gibraltar and Malta, in the Mediterranean; 
the Bermudas, certain of the West Indies, and the 
Falkland Islands, off the coast of America; Aden, 
Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Hong Kong, on 
the coast of Asia; together with many scattered islands 
valued as naval coaling stations and ports of call. 

Altogether about one-fourth of the total land area 
of the globe is included within the British Empire, and 
one-fourth of the whole population of the earth owes 
allegiance to the British flag. But only about one- 
eighth of its population (including that of the British 
Isles) belongs to the white race. The rest are mem¬ 
bers chiefly of the black and brown races, natives of 
Africa and Asia. 

The Secret of Britain’s Power 
How has Great Britain succeeded where other 
nations failed, and managed to hold together peace¬ 
ably such scattered lands inhabited by such different 
peoples? France and Spain lost their old colonial 
empires, and Holland and Portugal have only rem¬ 
nants left. The secret of Great Britain’s success is 
that she learned the lesson of administering her 
colonies, not for her own good primarily, but for that 
of the colonies. This lesson was taught her partly by 
the successful revolt of her Thirteen American 
Colonies. Something also was due to the Anglo- 
Saxon genius for self-government, which is one of the 
marked characteristics of her people. Gen. Jan Smuts 
of South Africa, who once fought with the Boers 
against Britain and then became a loyal British sub¬ 
ject, has pointed out that the British Empire is really 
a commonwealth of self-governing nations rather than 


contained in the Easy 


Reference Fact-Index at 

513 


the end of this 


work 






BRITISH EMPIRE 


an empire in the usual sense. It is, as he says, a 
“league of nations” in miniature. To colonies which 
are capable of governing themselves—to Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—the fullest 


BRITTANY1 

larger place in the government of the empire, even to 
a voice in deciding its foreign policy and questions of 
peace and war. 

The total area of the British Empire, including pro- 


THE EMPIRE THAT ENCIRCLES THE WORLD 



COLONIES 
Si EGYPTAND SUDAN 
UZm MANDATES 


After a glance at this map you will realize the truth of the old saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” When it is 
midnight in London, the clocks in the far away Fiji Islands are ringing noon. The black portions of this map indicate the territory 
directly under British dominion; Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which are under a British protectorate, are shown in shaded 
outline; while the former German possessions now under British mandate from the League of Nations are shown full-shaded. 


self-government has been granted. Even to India, 
where Asiatic despotism was always the rule before 
the coming of the British, self-government under the 
British Raj is promised as rapidly as its peoples are 
made ready for it. Only places of strategic import¬ 
ance (such as Gibraltar) and those inhabited by bar¬ 
baric races are permanently ruled as crown colonies, 
by officials sent out from London. 

The Colonies in the World War 
As was proved in the World War, when Germany 
expected the British colonies to revolt, it is loyal 
affection chiefly that keeps the great self-governing 
dominions true to their imperial mother, and the 
knowledge that they are safer and more prosperous 
in the Empire than out of it. A poet represents Great 
Britain as a lion and the self-governing colonies as 
its full-grown cubs, and thus expresses their inter¬ 
independence: 

The Lion stands by his shore alone 

And sends, to the bounds of Earth and Sea, 

First low notes of the thunder to be. 

Then East and West, through the vastness grim, 

The Whelps of the Lion answer him. 

In 1914 several millions of the “Whelps of the 
Lion” answered the call. Canadians and Australians, 
South Africans and New Zealanders, and even native 
Indian peoples crossed the seas and fought and even 
died to save Great Britain and the British Empire 
from German conquest. As a result the British 
government is pledged to give her colonies even a 


tectorates, etc., is about 12,000,000 square miles; its 
population, about 400,000,000. (See also England, 
and articles on the great self-governing colonies and 
India.) 

BRITTANY, France. Wherever the French flag 
waves over a fishing-schooner, a trading vessel, or a 
warship—whether it be on the Banks of Newfound¬ 
land, on the China coast, along the fever-soaked 
shores of Africa, or among the tiny islands of the 
Pacific—you will find the sons of Brittany, those 
black-haired thick-shouldered sailors from the rock- 
bound peninsula which France thrusts westward into 
the Atlantic. For this province is inhabited by a 
seafaring race which for centuries has lived a life 
apart, gathering its living largely from the ocean or 
by cultivating the stony soil with patient obstinacy. 

“The Breton peasant,” say the French, “fears God 
and the sea and nought else in the universe.” Indeed, 
these descendants of an ancient Celtic race have 
clung far more dosely than other Frenchmen to their 
old religious faith. Everywhere along the wayside 
one comes upon tall crucifixes, and men in long 
blouses and wooden shoes, or women in quaint native 
costume kneeling before them. Nearby perhaps is a 
small church and a cemetery, with many crosses over 
empty graves, telling of brave men lost at sea. 

The people of Brittany are melancholy and gloomy 
like the ocean fog, or gay and boisterous like the 
dancing wave. They are fierce fighters, with tempers 


For any subject not found in its alphabetical place see inf or motion 

514 













like the storms which smash against their coasts. 
They settle their private difficulties most often with 
their fists, avoiding law courts as much as possible. 
In time of war they fight for their country with equal 
courage and zeal. 

But under the influence of modem industrial progress, 
the quaint old customs and costumes of Brittany are rapidly 
passing away. Its biggest seaports have become great naval 
stations or trade centers. Abundant crops are being raised 
in the river valleys, especially in the north where modem 
agricultural methods have been introduced. Among the 
important towns are the seaports of Brest and Nantes, and 
Rennes, the capital of Brittany in the old days when it was 
a semi-independent duchy. 

In olden times this land was the home of the Armorican 
tribes, which came under Roman control about 51 b.c. 
Celtic fugitives from Britain, fleeing from the Anglo-Saxon 
invaders of the 5th and 6th centuries, settled in this peninsula 
and gave it the name of Brittany, “Little Britain.” Through 
stormy generations it remained, most of the time an inde¬ 
pendent duchy, until it was incorporated with France in 1532. 

Brittany has given 
many great men to 
the world, among 
them the medieval 
scholar Abelard, the 
explorer Jacques 
Cartier, the writers 
Chateaubriand and 
Ernest Renan. 

Bronze. Very 
early in the history 
of civilization men 
learned to mix cop- 
per and tin to 
make an alloy we 
call bronze. This 
mixture was harder 
than either copper 
or tin alone, and 
was used for 
swords, axes, ar¬ 
row tips, and other 
weapons, before 
iron came into use. 

For this reason the 
period which fol¬ 
lowed the Stone 
Age of man’s 
history has been 
generally called 
the Bronze Age. 

In Europe this period extended roughly from 2000 to 
1800 b.c. 

Bronze is used in modern times to make big bells, 
for it has a rich tone when set in vibration by a sharp 
blow. By varying the quantities of tin and copper, 
the qualities of bronze may be greatly altered. In 
general the more tin that is used, the harder and 
more brittle will be the alloy. Bronze is also used 
for statuary, and for many art and industrial purposes. 

The bearings of much heavy machinery, like the 
rings in which the propeller shafts of big ships revolve, 
are often made of a substance called “phosphor 


bronze,” in which a small amount of phosphorus acts 
as an additional hardening agent. An alloy called 
“aluminum bronze,” in which the tin is almost 
entirely replaced by aluminum, is used for vessels 
which must withstand the corrosive action of certain 
chemicals. (See Alloys.) 

BROOKLYN, N.Y. " In 1898 Brooklyn, then the 
fourth largest city in the United States, was merged 
in greater New York. It lies at the west end of 
Long Island, across the East River from New York, 
with which it is connected by three huge suspension 
bridges, several subway tubes and railway tunnels, 
and ferries. Although called “the sleeping room of 
New York City,” Brooklyn is in reality one of the 
greatest manufacturing communities in the United 
States. Its sugar refineries are the largest in the 
country. The milling of coffee and spices, the manu¬ 
facture of machine shop products, ship building, and 

the storage of 
freight at its giant 
docks are among 
its extensive indus¬ 
tries. The N ew 
York Navy Yard 
at Brooklyn is one 
of the chief naval 
stations in the 
United States. As 
a “borough” of the 
city of New York, 
Brooklyn has its 
separate borough 
president, and con¬ 
trols such matters 
as streets, sewers, 
and other local 
improvements. 

Brooklyn was 
founded by the 
Dutch in 1636 and 
named “Breuc- 
kelen,” after a 
town in Holland. 
At the time of the 
American Revolu¬ 
tion it had become 
a village of 3,500 
inhabitants. On 
August 27, 1776, Washington was defeated in the 
battle of Long Island, fought on the site of Brook¬ 
lyn, and the village was held by the British until 
the evacuation of New York at the end of the war. 
At Fort Green (now Fort Green Park) were buried 
11,000 Americans who died on British prison ships. 
In 1816 Brooklyn was incorporated as a village, and 
as a city in 1834. Subsequently Williamsburg, Flat- 
bush, and other suburbs were annexed; and in 1898 
this enlarged Brooklyn was united with New York 
City across the arm of the ocean known as East River. 
Population, almost 2,000,000. (See New York City.) 


RELICS OF THE BRONZE AGE 



These prehistoric articles of bronze, dug up in England, tell us something of the 
civilization of the Britons before the coming of the Romans. The round shield 
(1) was found in the Thames River; the “celt” (2) is a chisel-shaped weapon 
with a socket in which fitted a handle; the other relics are a bracelet (3), a spear 
head (4), a strange and deadly looking razor (S), a long dagger (6), and a crude 

sickle (7). 


contained in the Easy Reference Fact-Index at the end of this work 

515 












[brooms AND BRUSHES K 


BROWNING, ELIZABETH! 


Brooms and Brushes. “Buy a broom! Buy a 
broom!” This monotonous cry of the street peddler 
or strolling broom merchant was once a familiar 
sound in the streets of towns and cities. But it is 
heard no longer, for now we buy our brooms and 
brushes prosaically over the counter. 

Brooms are made by attaching dried fibers of the 
broom-corn plant to a long handle. First, a winding 
machine wraps wire around the ends of the fibers 
when they surround the handle. Then the broom, 
which is now cone-shaped, is put into a vise and 
flattened into the shape with which we are familiar, 
and sewed with heavy twine to hold it in shape. A 
scraping machine removes most of the broom-corn 
seeds which are still attached to the fibers, trimming 
is put on, if it is desired, and the brooms are ready to 
be packed and shipped. Whiskbrooms are made in 
much the same way, on a smaller scale. 

More than nine-tenths of our brushes are made of 
hog bristles, though camel’s hair and the hair of 
other animals are used for making fine artists’ 
brushes. Scrubbing brushes are made usually of 
various vegetable fibers, the most common being 
rice root, “Mexican grass,” “kitool” ( a wood fiber 
boiled in oil, coming from the west coast of Africa), 
Tampico fiber (from the Philippines), and bristle fiber 
or coir (the husk of the coconut palm). In cheaper 
brushes the tufts of bristles or fibers are merely bound 
with thread, dipped into melted pitch, and twisted 
into holes bored in the wooden back. Better grades 
are made by binding the tufts with wires, which are 
drawn through the holes and woven together. A 
veneer is then glued or cemented to the back. Elab¬ 
orate machinery is now used for nearly all processes. 

The broom-corn plant is a member of the sorghum family. 
It has a cluster of rays at the top which bear the flowers. 
These rays, when dried, make the “straws” in our brooms. 
The plant is a native of East India, but is largely cultivated 
in the United States. An acre will produce from 500 to 600 
pounds of “brush.” Scientific name, Sorghum saccharatum. 

BROWN, John (1800-1859). The Civil War between 
the Northern and Southern states might have been 
delayed for several years but for John Brown’s ill-fated 
raid on the government arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, in 
October 1859. His subsequent death on the scaffold 
had the effect of crystallizing opposing opinions on 
the slavery question, and so hurried a divided country 
toward the supreme test of arms. 

Born in Torrington, Conn., and descended from 
Peter Brown, carpenter of the Mayflower, this early 
abolitionist had all the piety, uprightness, and will¬ 
ingness to die for a cause that marked his Puritan 
ancestors. While a young man his eyes were so weak 
as to forbid sufficient study, thus preventing his 
preparation for the ministry. As a wool-grower, 
farmer, leather dresser, and surveyor, he and his large 
family of children dwelt successively in Ohio, Penn¬ 
sylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, always 
brooding with the fervor of an Old Testament prophet 
on the sin of negro slavery, against which he swore 
eternal war. Such was his strength of character that 


he made unfaltering converts of his young children 
and, when they grew up and married, of their wives 
and husbands. The whole family had a sense of 
dedication to a sacred cause. 

At John Brown’s command his sons emigrated to 
Kansas, in 1854, to aid in bringing that territory into 
the Union as a Free-Soil state. He soon followed 
them and played a leading part in that border war¬ 
fare of bitterly contested elections and bloody fights. 
One of his sons was killed in the course of it, and 
another bore all his life the marks of prison chains. 
In a famous battle at Ossawatomie, with only 15 
men, he held off 500 pro-slavery Missourians and 
won the nickname of “Ossawatomie Brown.” 

When the Kansas question was settled in favor of 
freedom, he formed a mad scheme for making war 
upon slavery in the South itself. On a rented farm 
at Hagerstown, Md., he gathered a few men, and 
on the night of Oct. 16, 1859, attacked the little town 
of Harper’s Ferry. His purpose was to seize the 
United States arsenal there and procure arms for a 
slave uprising. He easily mastered the town and the 
arsenal, but was besieged by the local authorities, 
who were soon reinforced by a company of United 
States marines from Washington under Col. Robert 
E. Lee. Of the 22 men who participated in his raid, 
ten were killed, seven taken prisoners, and five 
escaped. Two of the killed men were Brown’s own 
sons, and he himself was seriously wounded. As 
soon as his wound permitted he was tried for “treason, 
and conspiring with slaves and other rebels, and 
murder in the first degree.” He was convicted and 
was hanged on December 2. His bearing at the trial 
produced an extraordinary impression of heroic sim¬ 
plicity and purity and grandeur of character. Within 
two years his tragic end took on a historical signifi¬ 
cance when Union armies marched to battle singing— 
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. 

But his soul goes marching on. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) 
This gifted poet and wife of Robert Browning was 
such a precocious child and lover of verse that she 
read Homer in the original Greek at 14. Feeling 
social wrongs deeply, she wrote ‘The Cry of the 
Children’, a fine and poignant lyric that helped to 
rescue little ones from labor in English factories. An 
invalid most of her life, Robert Browning called her 
“a soul of fire in a shell of pearl.” They were mar¬ 
ried in 1846 and he carried her away to Italy, where 
by the tenderest devotion recorded in literary history 
he kept her alive for nearly sixteen years. When she 
died in 1861 the city of Florence marked the house in 
which she had lived (called Casa Guidi ) with a 
tablet, in gratitude for her sympathy with the Italian 
struggle for liberty. Her best known writings are 
her ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, in which she 
pours out her love for her poet husband-to-be; ‘Casa 
Guidi Windows’, dealing with the Italian patriotic 
struggle of 1848-49; and ‘Aurora Leigh’, a romantic 
narrative poem. 


516 





















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